Disease Modeling

Gain advantage with human disease modeling

Disease modeling has enabled scientists to study a range of human diseases in the lab, overcoming many of the challenges of obtaining donor tissues from patients. Recent advances in genome editing in stem cells to recapitulate in vitro “disease in dish” promises a better understanding of underlying biological mechanisms of human diseases.

Free resources

Download these free 5 Step workflow guides created to help you build your next human iPSC-derived disease models.

5 steps to modeling Parkinson’s disease using human iPSCs hanbook cover

Free resource: 5 steps to modeling Parkinson’s disease using human iPSCs

5 steps to modeling cardiac disease using human iPSCs handbook cover

Free resource: 5 steps to modeling cardiac disease using human iPSCs

Our comprehensive tools, protocols and services are designed to help researchers overcome many challenges of genome editing using primary and stem cells to construct human disease models. Combined with recent advancements in genome editing technologies we enable scientists to gain new insights into human diseases and with the advantages of in vitro human disease modeling, including:

Streamlined isogenic cell line generation
Unlimited number of human iPSCs
Controlled experimental setting
Supports systematic evaluation of genetic mutations

Advance discovery through iPSC-based disease models

Neurodegenerative disease: neurodegenerative diseases represent a group of neurological disorders that destroy neurons in the brain. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, a progressive disorder that affects 1% of people over age 60 and more than five million people worldwide. See the steps our scientists took to model Parkinson’s disease (PD) using human iPSCs

Cardiovascular disease (CVD): cardiovascular/heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. With CVD claiming the lives of millions of people each year, the need for scientific research into disease mechanisms and possible therapies is imperative. See the steps our scientists took to model dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) disease using human iPSCs

Building relevant iPSC-based disease models

Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) show promise in many research areas, especially in disease modeling. By reprogramming donated somatic cells exhibiting disease morphology, a potentially unlimited source of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offers the ability to expand, differentiate, and study affected human cells without another animal model. Physiologically relevant cellular models can accelerate the discovery of disease mechanisms. Genome editing in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has been demonstrated to be highly effective for generating disease models for both monogenic and complex genetic disorders. Using iPSCs to model disease allows researchers to examine how specific types of cells are affected by a disease.

illustration showing the basic steps to reprogram healthy cells into multiple disease-relevant cells

Isogenic disease models that compare healthy donor cells to patient donor cells can introduce high patient-to-patient variability and confound experimental results. Advancements in genome editing technologies such and CRISPR /Cas9 and TALEN systems now enable construction of human isogenic controls with less variability to help mitigate these problems. The ability to engineer cells creates obvious advantages by eliminating genetic variability that occurs from patient to patient, providing more consistent phenotypes with every trial.

illustration showing the basic steps to create isogenic controls for disease-relevant cell types

Research tools and protocols

We created, modified, and used many protocols while building the cellular disease model case studies. Listed here are the most popular protocols and media used in the stem cell workflow typically employed in our research, grouped into culture, reprogramming and editing, characterization and differentiation workflow segments.