Development of an iPSC-derived human vascular system for drug discovery and devel

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): R43 SBIR: Development of an iPSC-derived human vascular system for drug development. ABSTRACT Human inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be differentiated into vascular endothelial (iEC) and smooth muscle (iSMC)cells and hold immense potential for developing drugs in genetically defined subpopulations and for patients with vascular rare diseases, such as Marfan's syndrome, from which iPSCs can be acquired. However, it has not been clearly demonstrated that iECsand iSMCs are phenotypically similar to differentiated human primary adult vascular cells, including disease risk factor and drug responsiveness. This cannot be understated as recent studies with iPSC-derived hepatocytes have shown that these cells provide limited utility to the FDA and pharmaceutical industry for drug discovery as they retain many fetal -like characteristics, failin to express primary hepatocyte levels of many cytochrome p450 enzymes, including the CYP3A family, which is responsible