Pluripotent stem cells as a platform for cardiac arrhythmia drug screening.

OPINION STATEMENT: Since the first demonstrations of the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to produce functional human cellular models such as cardiomyocytes, the scientific community has been captivated [1, 2••, 3]. In the time since that seminal work, the field has been catapulted forward by the demonstration that adult somatic cells can be reprogrammed to an induced state of pluripotency [4••], and more recently by the development of efficient and sophisticated genome editing tools [5••, 6••, 7], which together afford a theoretically unlimited supply of relevant genetic disease models. In particular, many of the early successes with induced pluripotent stem cell technology have been realized with cardiac arrhythmia syndromes [8••, 9-15]. There is interest in applying stem cell models in large-scale screens to discover novel therapeutics or drug toxicities. This manuscript aims to discuss the potential role of hPSC-derived cardiomyocyte models in therapeutic arrhythmia screens and review recent advances in the field that bring us closer to this reality.