Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technologies (Takahashi et al. 2007) allow for the in vitro examination of human neural cultures derived from characterized donor subjects to explore molecular phenotypes related to disease. Biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders including addiction are complex and heterogeneous. Our understanding of these disorders could benefit from an examination of human neural cultures in vitro. To date, only a few studies have utilized human iPSCs in addiction research, including reports examining opioid (Sheng et al. 2016), nicotine (Oni et al. 2016), and alcohol use disorder (Lieberman et al. 2012, Lieberman et al. 2015). In the current report, we generated iPSC-derived neural cultures from a total of 24 donor subjects (11 controls and 13 alcoholics) and examined the effects of acute and chronic alcohol exposure on the expression and function of the inhibitory ionotropic GABAA receptor, a well-characterized target of alcohol.
