The Coriell Institute for Medical Research founded in 1953, is an internationally known non-profit, basic biomedical research institution. The Institute's founder, Lewis L. Coriell, M.D., Ph.D., played a major role in bringing the Salk polio vaccine to the public by using cell cultures to study human viral diseases.
The Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative is a research study that puts the Institute at the forefront of personalized, or genome-informed, medicine. By combining a functioning biobank facility with modern microarray technology, Coriell has created the ideal environment for this innovative project. The Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC) is a forward-thinking, collaborative effort involving volunteers, physicians, scientists, ethicists, genetic counselors and information technology experts whose goal is to better understand the impact of genome-informed medicine and to guide its ethical, legal and responsible implementation.
The CPMC is a pioneering research study that seeks to explore the utility of using genome information in clinical decision-making. The project also aims to understand why people often respond differently to treatments and to discover presently unknown genes that elevate a person's risk of cancer and other complex diseases. All volunteers will control their genetic profile. Participants who wish to will be able to view potentially medically actionable information about their genomic profiles through a secure web-browser-based system. A variety of educational material on genomics and medicine will also be provided through streaming video and downloads. This initiative will take an evidence-based approach to determine what genome information is clinically useful while ensuring that patient privacy is vigorously protected.
In 2007, Coriell established a multimillion-dollar Genotyping and Microarray Center – the facility that performs the genome analyses for the CPMC. This high-capacity facility consists of state-of-the-art equipment and receives samples from laboratories around the world requesting genotyping, microarray and gene expression analysis. The facility also processes up to 2,000 DNA or RNA samples per month.
In addition to conducting its own research in mechanisms of genetic disorders, cellular differentiation and systems biology, Coriell Institute serves the scientific community by maintaining the world's largest biobanking facility. Construction of the cryogenic storage facility at Coriell Institute was due, in part, to an award from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Coriell’s biobank has distributed more than 160,000 cell lines in addition to more than 50,000 DNA samples a year to researchers in sixty-two nations. Staffed by experts in molecular biology, cytogenetics, cell biology, human genetics, molecular genetics, neurobiology and systems biology, the biobanking facility plays a vital role in modern biomedical research. These repositories provided support to the Human Genome Project, a world-wide program to map the entire human genome, and to the International HapMap Project, a project providing an efficient tool to identify disease causing genes.
The Coriell Institute maintains contracts from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Institute of Aging (NIA) to establish and maintain what has become one of the largest cell repositories for the study of genetic and aging-related diseases. In 2001, Coriell was selected to build repositories for the Integrated Primate Biomaterials and Information Resource (IPBIR), supported by the National Science Foundation. A repository for samples from stroke, epilepsy and Parkinson disease was developed in 2002, supported by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS), and in 2006, a new repository for genetic research funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute was established.
The Coriell Institute for Medical Research currently occupies a five-story laboratory facility on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Camden and is adjacent to Cooper Hospital/University Medical Center. This location fosters partnerships for basic research, education and medical care in Southern New Jersey.
|
|