Nolasco Patricia, Borsoi Juliana, Moraes Carolina Borsoi, Freitas-Junior Lucio H, Pereira Lygia Veiga
Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Biociências, Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva, Laboratório Nacional de Células-tronco Embrionárias (LaNCE), São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Diadema, SP, Brazil.
Genet Mol Biol. 2020 Nov 16;44(1 Suppl 1):e20200198. doi: 10.1590/1678-4685-GMB-2020-0198. eCollection 2020.
The emergence of the new corona virus (SARS-CoV-2) and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic requires fast development of novel prevention and therapeutic strategies. These rely on understanding the biology of the virus and its interaction with the host, and on agnostic phenotypic screening for compounds that prevent viral infection. In vitro screenings of compounds are usually performed in human or animal-derived tumor or immortalized cell lines due to their ease of culturing. However, these platforms may not represent the tissues affected by the disease in vivo, and therefore better models are needed to validate and expedite drug development, especially in face of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this scenario, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are a powerful research tool due to their ability to generate normal differentiated cell types relevant for the disease. Here we discuss the different ways hiPSCs can contribute to COVID-19 related research, including modeling the disease in vitro and serving as a platform for drug screening.
新型冠状病毒（SARS-CoV-2）的出现以及由此引发的COVID-19大流行，需要快速开发新的预防和治疗策略。这些策略依赖于对病毒生物学及其与宿主相互作用的理解，以及对预防病毒感染的化合物进行无偏向性表型筛选。由于易于培养，化合物的体外筛选通常在人源或动物源的肿瘤细胞系或永生化细胞系中进行。然而，这些平台可能无法代表体内受该疾病影响的组织，因此需要更好的模型来验证和加速药物开发，尤其是在面对COVID-19大流行的情况下。在这种情况下，人类诱导多能干细胞（hiPSC）因其能够生成与该疾病相关的正常分化细胞类型而成为一种强大的研究工具。在这里，我们讨论了hiPSC有助于COVID-19相关研究的不同方式，包括在体外对该疾病进行建模以及作为药物筛选的平台。
