Human iPS cells have a great potential to be cell sources for regenerative medicine because of
the promise of infinite self-renewal and the capability to differentiate into multiple cell
types. This book focuses on another great potential of human iPS cells which is the
establishment of human disease models using patient-specific iPS cells. Human iPS cells can be
easily obtained from a patient¿s somatic cells and provide the entire information on the
patient¿s genome. Accordingly we can generate disease models for inheritable diseases in cell
culture dishes using iPS cells. This is a quite new technique but holds tremendous potential
for our increased understanding of pathogenesis and will then be the basis for novel drug
development industries. All the authors are leading researchers in this field and they have
reported many kinds of patient-derived iPS cells. In this book they introduce the aspects that
could be recapitulated in terms of disease modelling as well as further innovative findings
such as novel pathogenetic insights and novel therapies.
