Human iPS Cells in Disease Modelling

Human iPS cells have a great potential to be cell sources for
regenerative medicine because of the promise of infinite self-renewal and the
capability to differentiate into multiple cell types. This book focuses on
another great potential of human iPS cells, which is the establishment of human
disease models using patient-specific iPS cells. Human iPS cells can be easily
obtained from a patient’s somatic cells and provide the entire information on the
patient’s genome. Accordingly, we can generate disease models for inheritable
diseases in cell culture dishes using iPS cells. This is a quite new technique
but holds tremendous potential for our increased understanding of pathogenesis,
and will then be the basis for novel drug development industries. All the
authors are leading researchers in this field and they have reported many kinds
of patient-derived iPS cells. In this book, they introduce the aspects that
could be recapitulated in terms of disease modelling as well as further
innovative findings such as novel pathogenetic insights and novel therapies.