The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) www.nigms.nih.gov has funded a $14 million 5 year cooperative agreement with Coriell Institute for Medical Research www.coriell.org to continue to operate the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository (HGCR).
Researchers at Coriell are playing an important role in their induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cell research. iPS are powerful cells made from skin or blood cells and are revolutionizing the way human disease is studied and how drugs are developed.
For example, skin cells from a patient diagnosed with heart disease are being genetically reprogrammed into stem cells and then transformed into beating cardiac cells. This enables researchers to be able to examine the heart’s diseased cells to better understand the progression of heart disease and help to develop treatments and cures.
Drug efficacy and safety can also be tested in the laboratory environment to provide an efficient model of drug discovery that delivers drugs to patients sooner. This technology called “disease in a dish” offers researchers the potential to study the myriad of human diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, muscular dystrophy, and diabetes.
Essential to the NIGMS repository is the support of international scientific research from the Coriell Biobank www.coriell.org/research-services/biobanking/overview, a cell bank able to manage and distribute diverse collections of cell lines, DNA, and other biological resources.
With the input of scientific data from Coriell, the NIGMS repository has enabled scientists to gain important insights into a number of genetic disorders such as Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and mitochondrial diseases. In addition, scientists are using repository lines from different geographic regions and extended families to explore human DNA sequence variation and links to disease
Michael Bender PhD., NIGMS Program Director for the repository reports, “Demand for repository specimens continues to be high with over 5,000 cell lines and almost 40,000 DNA samples provided to 1,500 different scientists in 2014 alone.”