Year 2

The goal of CIRM Grant ID1-06557 is to generate high quality induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from blood and skin samples from 3000 donors, many of whom suffer from untreatable medical conditions, and place them in a Repository accessible to scientists around the world. Many common diseases have a complex or unknown origin that makes it difficult to develop effective treatments. iPSCs have the great advantage that they can be generated from adults suffering from a known disease and then converted (“differentiated”) into any cell type in the body. For example, iPSC lines from patients with heart disease can be converted into heart cells, iPSC lines from patients with Alzheimer’s disease can be converted to brain cell, and iPSC lines from patients with pulmonary fibrosis can be converted into cells of the lung. Comparison of these “patient-derived” iPSC lines with those from healthy donors can help to illuminate the underlying cause of disease and also to serve as a system for discovering drugs to treat the disease in question. Our lab has been tasked with converting control and patient blood or skin cells, collected by scientists throughout the state of California, into high quality iPSCs. In the past year, 1100 samples have been converted to iPSCs and passed quality control. These lines are being used to produce large Distribution Banks that will be made available to scientists globally.