In addition to functional activity studies, hiPSC-derived neurons can be processed for RNAseq to study up and down regulation of transcripts, immunohistochemistry to observe the localization of proteins, and Western analyses to quantitate protein expression levels. Since many alcohol-related variants are believed to be eQTLs (Mamdani et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2017), genome-wide transcript analysis is likely to reveal regulatory targets and these processes are expected to be cell type specific. With this wide selection of techniques, researchers can elucidate differences in activity in healthy, disease affected, genetically manipulated, and pharmacologically treated human cells. Thus, hiPSC-derived neurons can provide unique insight into developmental events of AUD on a transcriptomic and functional level. Furthermore patient-derived cells are an effective experimental platform for manipulating disease phenotypes and testing pharmacotherapy response.
