Personalized psychiatry with human iPSCs and neuronal reprogramming

In little more than a decade since their first reported use and methodological discovery, human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have provided exceptional new progress and opportunities for understanding psychiatric disease from an individualized perspective. In this chapter, we discuss the application of iPSCs to personalized psychiatry, beginning with an overview of iPSC technology and methods, and challenges and opportunities for their application in personalized medicine, including therapeutics development, individualized prediction of drug response, and potential identification of individually unique disease mechanisms or genetics. Next, we review how iPSC technologies have thus far been used to model and better understand psychiatric diseases, with a focus on bipolar disorder, depression and major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and autism spectrum disorder. Finally, we finish by addressing what we consider to be the key needs and opportunities for maximizing the impact of iPSC research and technology on personalized psychiatry.