THANKS, W:

Stem Cells That Save Big Pharma a Bundle: Researchers hope they can use human tissue created from stem cells to help identify potentially dangerous side-effects from drugs under development before human trials (Rob Waters, 9/24/10, Business Week)

For more than a decade, stem cells (master cells that form all other cells in the body) have been hailed as potential treatments for Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, and diabetes. While those advances are years away, Big Pharma has begun using the cells to help identify potentially dangerous side effects from drugs under development before they undergo expensive human trials. [...]

The savings can be substantial. A drug study in mice alone can cost about $3 million, says Michael C. Venuti, chief executive officer at iPierian, which is developing drugs using stem cells. A drug that's found to cause cardiac damage only after it has advanced to large, late-stage human studies might cost a company $1 billion or more, says Jason Gardner, a Glaxo vice-president who heads its stem cell drug performance unit. "There is a real need to more accurately model human physiology," he says.

The stem cells being employed by drugmakers don't come from embryos, thereby avoiding an ethical and political controversy that's dogged the technology. Instead they were created using a method that allows scientists to transform ordinary skin cells into another type of stem cell (known as induced pluripotent stem, or IPS, cells) as versatile as embryonic cells.