Number of reports recently, where hiPSCs were used for generating various human tissues, have received a lot of media publicity. Of course, the scientific merit and the potential implications are enormous.. One report in Cell-October, 2014 on the Generation of Functional Human Pancreatic β Cells In Vitro (www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01228-8) from Prof. Melton lab at Harvard Stem Cell Institute is a game changer not just for drug discovery, but also in "hopefully curing" diabetes? Another in March 2015, from Prof. Healy lab, UC-Berkeley, on Human iPSC-based Cardiac Microphysiological System For Drug Screening Applications in Nature Press journal-Scientific Reports (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25748532) for bio-engineering of 3D heart....
Can hiPSCs-generated human tissues and system biology software programs replace animal studies, mimic drug metabolism and articulate disease profiling? Can we decipher Toxicogenomics and Pharmacogenomics using these tissues, and extrapolate these data sets to predict at least the SAFETY of a new drug molecule in human, thereby bye-passing phase-1 clinical trial?
I've been looking into new disease research models myself. Based on the most recent literature I can find, they are already trying out these new models for pharmaceutical safety and discovery. Here are some of the links and papers I found on the subject.
Hope they help in answering the question.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25794298
Certainly, hiPSCs could replace many, if not all, animal models in such cases.
In my opinion, the question is not could it happen but when will that happen. How long will it takes (i.e 10, 20 or 50 years) is very hard to predict. I attended the European society of in vitro toxicology last June and the debate was : could we get rid of animal testing in safety assessment of chemicals within 5 years.
Many drugs fail in Phase II clinical trials due to flaws in the original scientific hypothesis. Amgen Pharmaceuticals were only able to reproduce the findings in 6/53 landmark papers and Bayer Healthcare found inconsistencies between published findings and the company's own results in about two thirds of projects. The use of hiPSCs should help to reduce this failure rate, reduce the number of animals used in pre-clinical studies and reduce development costs. Ultimately, it may also reduce animal use in safety testing. But these new methods need to be rigorously tested and validated to ensure that they are robust and fit-for-purpose before abandoning all animal experimental studies.
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