A little over a year ago we set aside $40 million to study how variations in the human genome – the complete map of our genetic information – can affect our ability to use stem cells to treat a wide variety of diseases and disorders.

That money helped set up the Stanford/Salk Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Genomics (CESCG) with a goal of using genomic analysis to better understand how stem cells change as they grow and become different kinds of cells, and then use that knowledge to develop new treatments for a wide variety of conditions.

Now the CESCG has just announced it is investing $11.6 million on seven different projects aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of deadly or disabling diseases and conditions, such as heart disease and autism.

As Stanford’s Dr. Michael Snyder, a co-Principal Investigator on the project, said in a news release, a major part of CESCG’s mission is to “establish a Collaborative Research Program (CRP) to support the genomics research needs of stem cell investigators in California,”

‘We don’t just provide funds we also partner with the individual researchers, providing them with the support, expertise and resources they need to conduct successful genomics analyses. We received 30 applications from throughout the State, and after peer review 7 projects were identified as the best new collaborations for the Center.”

So how does this advance stem cell science? Well, in the past researchers often depended on animal models for their work; but because results in animals don’t always translate when applied to people this was not always an effective way to work. At the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Los Angeles researchers Arnold Kriegstein and Gay Crooks are using genomics to better understand normal human cell identities in the brain (UCSF) and the blood (UCLA) and then applying that knowledge to help develop more accurate and more detailed stem cell-based models for us to study.

Jonathan Thomas, the Chair of our Board, says one of the best ways to do great science, is to create a great team:

“The goal of the Board in creating this program and bringing together this group of researchers was to accelerate our fundamental understanding of human biology and the ways that disease work. That knowledge will help point the way not just to new treatments but also, hopefully, to ways that those treatments can potentially be tailored to meet the needs of individual patients.”