An Interactive Multimedia Approach to Improving Informed Consent for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research

Heralded as an ethical alternative to human embryonic stem cells, the derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has opened novel avenues for disease modeling and cell-based therapy; however, with the increasing capacity for large-scale collections of individual iPSC lines there is a pressing need to ensure that prospective tissue donors are adequately informed of the implications of their participation (Isasi et al., 2014). Although previous work has sought to outline the issues particular to iPSC research that are of interest to the general public (Dasgupta et al., 2014) and detailed consent guidelines have been described (Aalto-Setälä et al., 2009, Dasgupta et al., 2014, Lomax et al., 2013), little attention has focused on systematically assessing the quality or efficacy of the informed consent process.