NEW YORK(GenomeWeb) – The Coriell Institute today announced the launch of the world's largest publicly available human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) bank, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) hPSC Repository.
The Coriell Institute also said that 300 induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines will be available in September and up to 750 iPSC lines will be available by February 2016 at the repository.
Coriell originally announced the establishment of the new stem cell bank in March 2014 after receiving a $10 million grant from CIRM, which also awarded $16 million to Madison, Wisconsin-based Cellular Dynamics to support the creation of iPSCs for the bank.
The iPSC lines in the CIRM hPSC Repository are created using donor samples submitted by approximately 3,000 volunteers and are then screened by a consortium of researchers at elite California academic centers, including the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco. Samples from donors are reprogrammed by Cellular Dynamics before being banked in Coriell's California facility within the Buck Institute in Novato. All specimens are accompanied by comprehensive demographic and clinical data, along with patient consents, and are securely stored and distributed to researchers by Coriell.
The new resource contains iPSC lines representing eleven diseases of interest including autism, epilepsy, blinding eye diseases, heart disease, lung disease, liver diseases, and Alzheimer's disease. "This new stem cell collection will allow researchers to study molecular mechanisms of disease within specific tissues of interest, leading to better understandings of disease and possibilities for prevention," Michael Christman, president and CEO of Coriell Institute, said in a statement.
In March, the Coriell Institute also received a $14 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue biobanking efforts and support the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Human Genetic Cell Repository.