NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Coriell Institute today announced that it has received a $14 million competitive grant from the National Institutes of Health to support the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Human Genetic Cell Repository.
The five year grant from NIGMS will support a biobank which includes more than 11,300 cell lines and 5,700 DNA samples representing 890 disease states and chromosomal abnormalities in several distinct human populations. It also contains healthy control samples and 40 induced pluripotent stem cell lines.
"The advent of faster, better, and cheaper DNA sequencing is ushering in an exciting genomic era in which biobanks are more essential than ever before," Coriell Institute President and CEO Michael Christman said in a statement. "Biobanks with high-quality, characterized specimens are helping scientists better understand many human diseases. This collection is a powerful resource for scientists studying rare genetic diseases, like progeria and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well as other disorders such as metabolic diseases and hereditary cancers."
Last year, the Camden, NJ-based biomedical research center launched a West Coast biobank in Novato, Calif.