About Cowan Lab's Next Gen Cell Lines 

This collection, from Dr. Chad Cowan (Harvard Stem Cell Institute), was generated to confirm identified variants through differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells to study cellular pathophysiology. 

The Framingham Heart Study has provided knowledge about the epidemiology of hypertensive or arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.  These cell lines may be useful in studying cardiovascular disease.  

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 34 Framingham Heart Study (FHS) Offspring, Exam 9 or Omni I, Exam 4 Cohort participants were reprogrammed into iPSC lines. Upon initial deposit of this collection, 17 participants were homozygous for the major haplotype at the 1p13 locus and 17 participants were homozygous for the minor haplotype at the 1p13 locus. Two clones from each donor were further expanded resulting in a total of 68 iPSC lines. The focus of deriving these cell lines was to differentiate iPSC lines into hepatocytes and adipocytes to investigate the effect of the 1p13 rs12740374 variant on cardiometabolic disease phenotypes via transcriptomics and metabolomics signatures. The age of donors ranges from 51-90 years. To protect donor identity, an age range rather than exact age is provided.   

Please see Table S1 from the publication describing this collection of cell lines for additional information on these cell lines including:
• 1p13 Genotype
• Average Adipocyte Differentiation Efficiency
• Average Hepatocyte-like Cells (HLC) Differentiation Efficiency 

Application to and approval by the Framingham Heart Study is necessary to receive these cell lines.  You can being your research application here.  

About the Next Generation Genetic Association Studies (Next Gen) Program 

These cell lines were created as Next Generation Genetic Association Studies (Next Gen) Program, which was a five-year, $80 million program to investigate functional genetic variation in humans by assessing cellular profiles that are surrogates for disease phenotypes. To achieve this, researchers from multiple institutions across the U.S. were awarded grants to derive iPS cell lines from more than 1,500 individuals representing various conditions as well as healthy controls for use in functional genomic (‘disease in a dish’) research. This extensive panel includes a diverse set of age, gender and ethnic backgrounds, and therefore will be an invaluable tool for evaluations across demographics. Further enhancing the utility of these cell lines are data sets such as phenotyping, GWAS, genome sequencing, gene expression and -omics analyses (e.g., lipidomic, proteomic, methylomic) that will be made available with the cell lines.