$170 Million to Support Stem Cell Initiatives at the U of M

The University of Minnesota is the co-recipient of a collaborative $170 million programmatic award involving 18 institutions and focusing on emerging technologies, including induced pluripotent stem cell biology. This award is titled the Midwestern Progenitor Cell Consortium, and has a goal of identifying and characterizing progenitor cell lineages, as well as directing the differentiation of stem and progenitor cells to desired cell fates, and developing new strategies to address the unique challenges presented by the transplantation of these cells. Dr. Daniel Garry, Director of the Lillehei Heart Institute and Chief of the Cardiovascular Division, is the lead Principal Investigator (PI) of this grant and states that the projects undertaken at the University will define the key regulatory nodes in the networks that promote stem cells and progenitor cells to adopt a hematopoietic and cardiovascular cell fate – with an aim toward improving clinical options. We will decipher the intracellular, extracellular, and paracrine factors that promote stem/progenitor cell specification and differentiation to cardiac, vascular, and hematopoietic restricted lineages. In these projects, we will utilize an array of tools and emerging technologies including transgenic mouse models, genetically engineered embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, clonal cardiac progenitor cell populations, the decellularized heart, and state-of-theart high resolution imaging/spectroscopy technologies. These tools and technologies will facilitate our studies and those of our partners at the University of Wisconsin and others associated with the consortium. The overall goal of this proposal is to mechanistically decipher the intracellular and extracellular networks that govern specification and differentiation of stem cells to the cardiovascular and hematopoietic lineages.

This consortium has assembled clusters of synergistic research projects, each with a multi-disciplinary team of Principal Investigators, to establish virtual Research Hubs focused on progenitor cell biology. These investigators include Dan Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., Michael Kyba, Ph.D., Jonathan Slack, Ph.D., Doris Taylor, Ph.D., and Jianyi Zhang, M.D., Ph.D.

For more information, visit the Midwest Progenitor Cell Consortium website at: www.med.umn.edu/mwconsort/