Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
parameters (such as cholesterol levels and blood pressure) for
tailoring individual care [57, 58].
Several advances in a number of molecular profiling technologies,
such as proteomics, metabolomics, or genomics, now allow the
personalization of the treatment of a given individual. In addition,
HCS of drugs using the cells derived from an individual as target may
allow for a greater degree of personalized medicine than is currently
available.
The advances achieved with hMSCs and iPSCs have opened the
way to a new horizon in medical technology. These stem cells, and
more specifically our ability to manipulate them, will allow us to
change the focus of drug development from generic to personal.
Thus, it will be possible to characterize the eff ect of a repertoire of
therapies available for a certain disease in the cells obtained from
a certain individual. This can be an unparalleled achievement and
its contribution to the success rate of treatments may be truly
astronomical. For example, eff ective treatment for cancer is far from
a certainty. Large numbers of chemo-therapeutic drugs are available,
but many patients are unresponsive to a large portion of the various
treatments. If the stem cell technique is used, it may be possible to
improve the eff ectivity of the treatments by individual selection of
treatment choices using the autologous stem cell based approach.
9.5
Stem Cells as Tools for Improvement of
Safety and Toxicology
While lack of efficacy is the main cause of failure in clinical testing,
toxicity accounts for approximately 30% of the attrition rate
[59]. Traditional safety studies in animals are resource- and time
consuming. As a consequence, in order to predict adverse clinical
eff ects at a lower cost, cell-based assays have been introduced at
earlier stages of the drug discovery process [60]. These assays
allow monitoring of the known mechanisms of drug toxicity, such as
apoptosis, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, micronuclei,
phospholipidosis [61], and steatosis [62].
Micronuclei are small, stainable bodies outside the nucleus
that form when a chromosome or its fragment is not incorporated
into one of the daughter nuclei during cell division, constituting a
hallmark of genetic toxicity. Therefore, it is widely used as an assay
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