Tools for drug discovery and disease modeling- the future is upon us

Although technical prowess in screening for drugs has increased dramatically with the development of high content imaging, resonance energy transfer- and intensiometric biosensors, translation into the clinic has stagnated and not all drugs work in all patients. This is likely due to 1) our rudimentary understanding of disease mechanisms, and 2) our increasing use of generic, cell-based screens which have moved us away from biologically relevant tissues, organs, and patients. Here, we focus on emerging tools to undertake screening and evaluate drug actions in models ranging from heterologous expression systems, primary cells, patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells and organoids to in vivo models.