Patient-specific pluripotent stem cells in doxorubicin cardiotoxicity: A new window into personalized medicine

In the past ten years, there has been a revolution in our ability to generate human pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from adult somatic cells. hiPSCs can be differentiated into many cell types, including cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), providing cardiovascular scientists for the first time with a human heart muscle cell line. hiPSC-CMs have several potential uses: to study mechanisms of disease, as a platform for screening drugs for efficacy and toxicity, and as cell therapy for diseases such as cardiomyopathy. In this review, we discuss the potential of using hiPSC-CMs for drug toxicity testing, and in particular to screen genetic variants found to be predictive of which patients develop cardiotoxicity after receiving the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin.