Year 3

This grant has enabled a plethora of activities pertaining to stem cell genomics in the state of California. 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 third year of the award the CESCG administration organized monthly telephone conference calls to share research progress and coordinate activities across the center. On April 20th-21st, 2017 the CESCG held its third annual stem cell genomic CIRM retreat at Stanford University. CIP1 has collected 180 blood samples in total and generated a valuable resource of 164 induced pluripotent stem cell lines. Whole genome sequencing from the first batch of 34 iPSCs has been completed and data analyzed. CIP1 has also differentiated 26 iPSCs into cardiomyocytes and treated them with various drugs followed by RNA-Seq. CIP2 has managed to establish a workflow for Patch-seq in an effort to couple cell function and genomics and in situ methods to localize the candidates identified previously from RNAseq of primary tissues. In addition, they posted a manuscript to Bioarxiv that presents results from the analysis of fetal and adult pancreatic tissue, and another manuscript that describes infiltrating cells in glioblastoma is under review. All other CRP collaborators have made a significant progress in their projects. These research projects from the CIPs and CRPs will transform stem cell research in California and continue its preeminence in this area.