A unit of Rutgers’ Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey, RUCDR is the world’s largest university-based biorepository.
Target ALS Foundation is a privately funded non-profit foundation “entirely focused on finding treatments for patients living with ALS” or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal neurodegenerative disease known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Manish Raisinghani, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., president of Target ALS Foundation, says his organization accelerates ALS drug development by funding consortia-based collaborative projects that require direct involvement of industry as well as by expansion and creation of shared core facilities that lower barriers for academia and industry to pursue ALS drug development.
“This is the first initiative of its kind to assist ALS researchers in academia and industry by providing stem cells lines for their use while permitting them to retain the data and intellectual property generated by their work,” Raisinghani said.
“By providing a reliable resource for high quality stem cell lines from Target ALS subjects, we anticipate that our collaboration will encourage scientists around the world to both utilize the existing cell lines as well as contribute new lines to this important collection,” said Michael Sheldon, director of the RUCDR Stem Cell Center.
The services RUCDR will offer on behalf of Target ALS will be expanding to include genetically modified stem cell lines.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Human Cell and Data Repository (NHCDR), operated under a grant awarded to RUCDR, has added the Target ALS stem cell bank to its widely used online catalog.