Fig. 3.

Drug screening and testing using patient-specific iPSCs. Patient-specific iPSCs provide a platform for personalized drug screening and testing. iPSCs generated from individual patients are differentiated into cardiovascular cells of interest and subjected to drug treatment in vitro. High-throughput methods allow functional characterization of the cells during or after drug treatment, from which responders vs. nonresponders and the side effects of the drug are identified. This information allows informed feedback to the patients regarding the drug’s efficacy and toxicity based on the individual responses to the drug. As such, patient-specific iPSC-based drug screening and testing provide accurate genotype-to-phenotype correlation that results in precise drug discovery and reduces the stressful and costly trial-and-error process for the patients, not to mention significantly reducing the cost of health care.