Table 5.
The pros and cons associated with the use of iPSCs.
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Due to characteristics of iPSCs | Eliminates ethical issues | Premature aging |
| Reduced chances of immunorejection (Guha et al., 2013) | High rate of apoptosis | |
| Reduced risks of clinical trials | Low level DNA damage repair (Zhang et al., 2012) | |
| Consistent phenotypes for disease modeling (Fong et al., 2013) | Sensitive to ionizing radiation (Zhang et al., 2013) | |
| Differentiation to any cell type | Low rate of reprogramming | |
| Due to technology of development | Continuous cell supply | Insertional mutagenesis (Okita et al., 2007; Howe et al., 2008) |
| Possible preservation | Tumourogenesis (Okita et al., 2007). | |
| Availability and accessability of source cells | Chances of development of diseases due to factors used (Ghaleb et al., 2005; Hochedlinger et al., 2005; Kuttler and Mai, 2006; Park et al., 2008c) | |
| Personalization of treatment (Chun et al., 2011) | Suboptimal standardization (Pappas and Yang, 2008) | |
| Applications | High-throughput screening of drugs and toxicity prediction (Wobus and Loser, 2011; Choi et al., 2013) | Complex assessment |
| Reduced cost | Complex diseases become difficult to be modeled | |
| Gene correction therapies add to the benefits from iPSCs (Choi et al., 2013) | Immature cells cause problems during cell line development |