Modeling viral infectious diseases and development of antiviral therapies using human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived systems

Abstract

The recent biotechnology breakthrough of cell reprogramming and generation of nduced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which has revolutionized the approaches to study he mechanisms of human diseases and to test new drugs, can be exploited to generate atient-specific models for the investigation of host–pathogen interactions and to develop ew antimicrobial and antiviral therapies. Applications of iPSC technology to the study f viral infections in humans have included in vitro modeling of viral infections of neural, iver, and cardiac cells; modeling of human genetic susceptibility to severe viral infectious iseases, such as encephalitis and severe influenza; genetic engineering and genome editing f patient-specific iPSC-derived cells to confer antiviral resistance.