Banking on iPSC--is it doable and is it worthwhile

Abstract

The discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and concurrent development of protocols for their cell-type specific differentiation have revolutionized studies of diseases and raised the possibility that personalized medicine may be achievable. Realizing the full potential of iPSC will require addressing the challenges inherent in obtaining appropriate cells for millions of individuals while meeting the regulatory requirements of delivering therapy and keeping costs affordable. Critical to making PSC based cell therapy widely accessible is determining which mode of cell collection, storage and distribution, will work. In this manuscript we suggest that moderate sized bank where a diverse set of lines carrying different combinations of commonly present HLA alleles are banked and differentiated cells are made available to matched recipients as need dictates may be a solution. We discuss the issues related to developing such a bank and how it could be constructed and propose a bank of selected HLA phenotypes from carefully screened healthy individuals as a solution to delivering personalized medicine.