“Disease in a dish” is a cutting-edge, stem cell-based strategy that allows researchers to study an individual patient’s cells in a laboratory dish. Traditionally, scientists interested in a particular disease have used a standard cell line that has been grown in the lab for years or a mouse model (if one exists) that has been engineered to mimic the disease. Although extremely valuable, these techniques have obvious limitations. Animal models never entirely reflect the actual human condition – they don’t capture the complicated interplay between an individual patient’s genetics and the environmental factors that might influence the development of the disease or that patient’s response to a new therapy.

Read below to find out how diseases in a dish are made, how they’re being used to study and treat disease and how Sanford-Burnham researchers are applying the technique.

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