Creating Patient-Specific Neural Cells for the In Vitro Study of Brain Disorders

•A key limitation of the field is difficulty in accurately defining cell state•Next step will be building complexity by achieving network and circuit structures•Epigenetic factors and somatic mosaicism in iPS cells may contribute to disease•A critical advance will be improving scalability and reproducibility of assays

SummaryAs a group, we met to discuss the current challenges for creating meaningful patient-specific in vitro models to study brain disorders. Although the convergence of findings between laboratories and patient cohorts provided us confidence and optimism that hiPSC-based platforms will inform future drug discovery efforts, a number of critical technical challenges remain. This opinion piece outlines our collective views on the current state of hiPSC-based disease modeling and discusses what we see to be the critical objectives that must be addressed collectively as a field.