CAMDEN, NJ – Coriell Institute for Medical Research, home to the world's most diverse biobank and a leading center for cutting-edge scientific exploration, has won a $14 million grant through an open competition from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a component of the National Institutes of Health.
The five-year award supports the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository at Coriell, a dynamic collection of more than 11,300 cell lines and 5,700 DNA samples representing a variety of disease states, chromosomal abnormalities and healthy individuals across several distinct human populations.
"Investigating, combating and preventing serious disease requires the collaborative energies of the most gifted and innovative biomedical experts in the field," says Dr. Michael Christman, president and CEO of Coriell Institute. "As technologies advance and we learn more about how complex conditions develop and respond to treatment strategies, it's imperative that researchers have the tools they need to arrive at health solutions. The NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository at Coriell plays a major part in that process."
Referenced by nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository includes samples accounting for 890 unique diseases. Within the last year, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School cited biospecimens from the NIGMS Repository while examining a prospective connection between the Ebola virus disease and Niemann-Pick Type C, an extremely rare genetic disorder.
"The cell repository greatly facilitates access to high-quality, well-characterized clinical resources that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for individual biomedical scientists to obtain," says Dr. Michael Bender, NIGMS program director for the Repository.
"This collection is an important asset for the research community at large," says Coriell's Nahid Turan, PhD, principal investigator. "In addition to enabling human disease studies by distributing tens of thousands of high-quality cell lines and DNA samples each year, the NIGMS Repository also proactively recruits new samples from various human genetic diseases in an effort to keep ahead of the human disease curve."
Established by the NIGMS in 1972, the Repository's central mission is to enable impactful biomedical discoveries in laboratories around the globe.
"For more than 40 years, the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository has stimulated groundbreaking science," says Dr. Dorit Berlin, Coriell's Director of Biobanking. "Coriell's dedicated infrastructure and unparalleled biobanking expertise make the Institute optimally suited to harness such an invaluable resource."
Samples from the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository, as well as a variety of custom research services from Coriell, are available online at catalog.coriell.org.
About Coriell Institute
Coriell Institute for Medical Research is an independent, non-profit biomedical research center based in Camden, New Jersey. Founded in 1953, the Institute is a pioneer in genomics, examining the utility of genetic information in clinical care through the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC) research study (cpmc.coriell.org). Coriell is also unlocking the promise of induced pluripotent stem cells and their role in disease research and drug discovery. Additionally, the Institute continues to be recognized as the world's leading biobank, distributing biological samples and offering research and biobanking services to scientists around the globe. For more information, visit www.coriell.org or follow @Coriell_Science on Twitter.
