NYSCF and PGP announce availability of unique new stem cell resource for scientific research

The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute and the Personal Genomes Project (PGP) today announced the availability of a unique new stem cell resource for scientists around the world. The stem cell lines resulting from this collaboration beginning in 2013 between the two organizations will now be available for use by other researchers.

Susan L. Solomon, NYSCF CEO and Co-founder stated, "The stem cell lines resulting from this important collaboration will accelerate research globally. They are a valuable resource for many different types of research and I am pleased that we are able to make this important resource available to the scientific community."

PGP Founder George Church noted that, "This milestone enables PGP, as the first truly open-access human bio-data resource, and as partner with NIST, FDA and NIH-ENCODE, to now put diverse stem cells in the hands of researchers and students worldwide, to develop new tissue and organ systems, to test new therapies and determine the diagnostic significance of millions of previously unknown DNA variations."

Uniquely, most of the stem cell lines available are fully or partially sequenced, making them especially useful in drug development research as well as in other research pursuits. The stem cell lines will be made available to all types of organizations, including academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, independent research consortia, and non-profit institutes.

PGP participants volunteered to provide skin samples for research that were used by NYSCF Research Institute scientists to turn them into induced pluripotent stem cell lines using the NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array™. The NYSCF Array is an automated robotic technology developed by NYSCF to standardize and scale-up the production of stem cell lines and differentiated cell types. The NYSCF Array enables an over ten-fold increase in stem cell line production with over one third less variability between cells as compared to manual cell line derivation.

The PGP tracks participants genomic data, medical histories, body microbiomes and hundreds of other traits which, in combination with the stem cell lines created by the NYSCF Research Institute, provide a unique and powerful resource to help identify causes of diseases, cures and preventions.