Product Hub: The growing potential of hiPS-derived beta cells

Christian Andersson, Product Development Manager at Takara Bio

hiPS-derived beta cells offer an unprecedented opportunity for diabetes research to model human physiology and ‘diseases in a dish’. What are the major challenges for researchers that can be solved with the hiPS-derived beta cells you recently launched?

Many scientists rely on primary cells. Access to primary cells is limited; they are difficult to scale-up and the material suffers from high donor-to-donor variability. Primary islet cells for example are difficult to isolate, not easy to culture, and available in low numbers, which makes it hard to have enough material to run assays. The alternative of using immortalised cell lines from pancreatic islets is also not satisfying, as they behave like insulin secreting cancer cells with a non-relevant metabolism and strong resistance to apoptosis, limiting their interest for metabolic disease research. Our hiPS-derived beta cells provide a powerful solution to these problems.