Dong-Hun Woo
NEXEL Co. Ltd., South Korea
Title: Drug screening and discovery using human pluripotent stem cell derived cells
Biography
Biography: Dong-Hun Woo
Abstract
Drug-induced toxicity is a main reason for withdrawals of new drugs in late clinical phases and post-launch of the drugs. Thus, development of predictive in vitro assay for early toxicity evaluation is important for drug discovery process. Here, we show various kind of cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) that could be used for early toxicity evaluation of drug candidates. From our inducing differentiation technology, we have routinely produced highly pure population (≥98%) of hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Furthermore, we optimized a culture condition of hPSC-derived functional cells suitable for toxicity tests in vitro, and we demonstrated the efficacy of our optimized hPSC-derived cell model for predicting toxicity against the several drugs. In conclusion, our hPSC-derived cell model could be a good alternative cell source for pre-clinical study such as predicting toxicity and efficacy test for the drugs, and translational research of disease cure.