Induced pluripotent stem cells, a giant leap for mankind therapeutic applications

Figure 1 Applications of human induced pluripotent stem cells. A: Pharmacotherapy can be optimized to the patients by testing the drugs on cells differentiated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to model the disease (blue panel). This approach may be used to determine the adequate treatment plan to specific patients and to limit side effects or non-responsiveness experienced by conventional clinical approaches supported by medical history and examinations, and test results to implement the treatment based on generic clinical approaches; B: iPSC-derived from patients may also be corrected for genetic defects and consequently used to treat the patients in cell-based or regenerative therapies (orange panel); C: iPSC may be used to derive immune cells to eliminate cancer cells, or to be inactivated and injected to vaccinate people against cancer cells; D: iPSC used to study developmental processes, model diseases and test drugs to assess toxicity in specific cell types (yellow panel); E: iPSC originated from non-diseased individuals are being characterized and preserved in Biobanks worldwide for allogenic cell-based therapies in HLA matched patients (green panel). iPSC: Induced pluripotent stem cells.