Neural stem cells as tools for drug discovery: novel platforms and approaches

Introduction: Neural stem cells catalyze strong interests for the development of systems to screen for effective drugs to treat neurodegenerative conditions and/or improve neurogenesis, fields where the classical approaches have so far failed in discovering successful drugs. Areas covered: The authors review the known biology of NSCs, their normal function in development, the adult brain, and in vitro culture systems. The authors also discuss the scientific and technological progress which will aid wider applications of NSCs for drug screening/development purposes. The authors base this article on literature searches performed through PubMed and Google Scholar. Expert opinion: NSC systems present unique opportunities that are starting to be successfully explored for genetic and chemical screening. These systems provide the possibility of identifying and optimizing molecules/drugs that could lead to the tighter control in self-renewal and lineage specification of NSCs as well as their functional maturation. This could be crucial in moving forward NSC-based therapies. It is expected that recent advances in the method of producing NSCs from patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and in the technologies to grow them in vitro, while preserving their full developmental potential, will allow a full exploitation of NSCs both in drug discovery programs and in predictive toxicology studies.