Understanding the physiopathology of disease remains an essential step in developing novel therapeutics. Although animal models have certainly contributed to advancing this enterprise, their limitation in modeling all the aspects of complex human disorders is one of the major challenges faced by the biomedical research field. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) derived from patients represent a great opportunity to overcome this deficiency because these cells cover the genetic diversity needed to fully model human diseases. Here, we provide an overview of the history of hiPSC technology and discuss common challenges and approaches that we and others have faced when using hiPSCs to model disease. Our emphasis is on liver disease, and consequently, we review the progress made using this technology to produce functional liver cells in vitro and how these systems are being used to recapitulate a diversity of developmental, metabolic, genetic, and infectious liver disorders.

中文翻译：

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用人类可诱导多能干细胞建模疾病。

了解疾病的生理病理学仍然是开发新疗法的重要一步。尽管动物模型确实为推动这一事业做出了贡献，但它们在对复杂人类疾病的所有方面进行建模方面的局限性是生物医学研究领域面临的主要挑战之一。源自患者的人类诱导多能干细胞 (hiPSC) 代表了克服这一缺陷的绝佳机会，因为这些细胞涵盖了完全模拟人类疾病所需的遗传多样性。在这里，我们概述了 hiPSC 技术的历史，并讨论了我们和其他人在使用 hiPSC 模拟疾病时面临的常见挑战和方法。我们的重点是肝脏疾病，因此，