Year 1

This grant has enabled a plethora of activities in California Stem Cell Genomics. The Stanford Administrative Core for the Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Genomics (CESCG) has been established and is responsible for overseeing joint center activities, and the administration of center-initiated projects (CIP) 1 and 2, and several collaborative research projects (CRP). In the first year of the award the CESCG administration organized monthly telephone conference calls to share research progress and coordinate activities across the Center. On May 1, 2015 the CESCG held its first center-wide retreat in a one-day event at Clark Center on the campus of the Stanford Medical School. The two CIPs have made significant progress. CIP1 has generated a valuable resource of 38 induced pluripotent stem cell lines and established a reliable platform for high throughput derivation of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes for use in downstream high throughput toxicity and drug pharmacology screening assays. CIP2 has completed the first human single cell brain analysis and is in the process of deriving a single cell pancreatic map. We have launched our collaborative research progress grant. Following on the receipt of applications in October 2014 and successful review in January 2015, the Administrative Core at Stanford has also issued subcontract awards for 3 CRPs managed by the CESCG from the Northern California site – two comprehensive project awards CRP-C2 to Daniel Geschwind of UCLA and CRP-C3 to Arnold Kriegstein of UCSF, and a regular project award CRP-R4 to Jeremy Sanford of UCSC. These activities will transform stem cell research in California and continue its preeminence in this area.