From individual disease models to promising therapies
Although scientists endeavor to unlock the complexity of human diseases, most questions regarding degeneration, including the central nervous system (CNS), remain open. An aging world population faces a high risk for degradation of cognitive and motor skills, as seen in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and various forms of brain impairment.
Studies have shown that early intervention can prevent the development of those diseases. To achieve that goal, the main focus must lay in understanding the biology defining degeneration in detail. Here, iPSC are of great benefit. They conserve individual genetic information, also of diseases, and thus are practical when modeling human ailments.
Since a patient's iPSC govern all necessary information allocated with an illness, organoids from those iPSC mirror the disease in the lab. That counts for Alzheimer's and other forms of neurodegeneration, too.
Although diseases may have similar origins, they establish differently in different people. By modeling a patient's pain with organoids, there is the ability to prove the effectiveness of drugs specifically for every single person. It is a major societal success to have entered the era of personalized and precision medicine.