Stem cell consortium tackles complex genetic diseases
To address this challenge, in 2010, the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's (NHLBI) Next Generation Genetic Association Studies Consortium sponsored a series of studies that began the hard work of analyzing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells gathered from large groups of patients to learn more about how individual mutations contribute to polygenetic diseases. Now, a group of 11 reports resulting from the collaborative effort appear in Cell Stem Cell , Stem Cell Reports , and EBioMedicine . The papers are presented on an interactive web portal, http://www.cell.com/consortium/NextGen . "When this started, the stem cell field had begun to get to the point where you could contemplate making iPS cells at scale for perhaps hundreds or thousands of individuals," says Chad Cowan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Broad Institute. "The time was right and the NHLBI had the vision to know that the next step in genome...