Medicine's Raeka Aiyar shares significance of genetically diverse cell lines
Genetically diverse cell lines are key to more inclusive disease modeling
Technology Networks: Raeka Aiyar, executive director at the Institute for Glial Sciences, explained how the cell lines commonly used today for discovery, often fail to capture humanity's genetic diversity. “To take data generated from cells with very similar genetic ancestries and treat it as generalizable for anyone with the same disease can have dangerous consequences, not only for biasing future studies of that disease, but also for developing treatments that only help a subset of patients or even may harm others,” said Aiyar.
