Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy models constructed from human induced pluripotent stem cells and directly converted cells: a systematic review

Developments in human cellular reprogramming now allow for the generation of human neurons for in vitro disease modelling. This technique has since been used for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) research, resulting in the description of numerous CIPN models constructed from human neurons. This systematic review provides a critical analysis of available models and their methodological considerations (ie, used cell type and source, CIPN induction strategy, and validation method) for prospective researchers aiming to incorporate human in vitro models of CIPN in their research. The search strategy was developed with assistance from a clinical librarian and conducted in MEDLINE (PubMed) and Embase (Ovid) on September 26, 2023. Twenty-six peer-reviewed experimental studies presenting original data about human reprogrammed nonmotor neuron cell culture systems and relevant market available chemotherapeutics drugs were included. Virtually, all recent reports modeled CIPN using nociceptive dorsal root ganglion neurons. Drugs known to cause the highest incidence of CIPN were most used. Furthermore, treatment effects were almost exclusively validated by the acute effects of chemotherapeutics on neurite dynamics and cytotoxicity parameters, enabling the extrapolation of the half-maximal inhibitory concentration for the 4 most used chemotherapeutics. Overall, substantial heterogeneity was observed in the way studies applied chemotherapy and reported their findings. We therefore propose 6 suggestions to improve the clinical relevance and appropriateness of human cellular reprogramming-derived CIPN models.