Key Points
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Cellular 'phenotypic' screening is a powerful unbiased method for elucidating and developing drugs for poorly understood processes such as neurodegeneration
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Neurons and glial cells can now be generated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)
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Commensurate progress in our ability to manipulate ('edit') human genomes paves the way for iPSC technology to be used for unbiased genetic and small-molecule screening of patient-derived cells
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The main roadblock for the neurodegeneration field is the identification of robust and disease-relevant cellular phenotypes
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A path toward screening of patient-derived cells and target identification can be suggested by investigations in model organisms, including the most screenable eukaryotic cell, baker's yeast
Abstract
In the absence of a single preventive or disease-modifying strategy, neurodegenerative diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent in our ageing population. The mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration are poorly understood, making the target-based drug screening strategies that are employed by the pharmaceutical industry fraught with difficulty. However, phenotypic screening in neurons and glia derived from patients is now conceivable through unprecedented developments in reprogramming, transdifferentiation, and genome editing. We outline progress in this nascent field, but also consider the formidable hurdles to identifying robust, disease-relevant and screenable cellular phenotypes in patient-derived cells. We illustrate how analysis in the simple baker's yeast cell Saccharaomyces cerevisiae is driving discovery in patient-derived neurons, and how approaches in this model organism can establish a paradigm to guide the development of stem cell-based phenotypic screens.
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Acknowledgements
V.K. has received an American Brain and Parkinson's Disease Foundations Clinician–Scientist Development Award, and is also funded by the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center and the Multiple System Atrophy Coalition. D.F.T. is the recipient of National Research Service Award fellowship F32NS061419, and is also funded by the Thome Memorial Foundation. C.Y.C. is funded by the National Institute on Aging. S.L. is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the JPB Foundation and the Eleanor Schwartz Charitable Foundation. We thank Linda Clayton for comments on the manuscript.
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V.K., D.F.T. and C.Y.C. researched data for the article, and reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission. V.K., D.F.T. and S.L. made substantial contributions to discussions of the content. All authors contributed equally to writing the article.
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V.K., D.F.T., C.Y.C. and S.L. are scientific co-founders of Yumanity Therapeutics, a company involved in neurodegenerative disease drug discovery.
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Khurana, V., Tardiff, D., Chung, C. et al. Toward stem cell-based phenotypic screens for neurodegenerative diseases. Nat Rev Neurol 11, 339–350 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2015.79
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2015.79
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