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Cell Line Resources from Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) Participants

The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is a longitudinal observational study conducted at over thirty international sites that collects data and biospecimens from idiopathic Parkinson’s patients, age- and gender-matched controls, and participants with risk factors for Parkinson’s disease (PD), such as genetic mutations, hyposmia, and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD), for up to five years. PPMI makes these data and biospecimens rapidly available to qualified investigators to enable biomarker research. In addition to blood products, nucleic acids, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), PPMI is also committed to obtaining and distributing a range of cell lines, including uniformly collected fibroblasts and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), from these well-characterized participants to be used for biomarker research, therapeutic development, drug screening, and disease modeling.

PPMI includes fibroblast and iPSC collections as part of two separate ancillary studies. The first sub-study, performed in collaboration with the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), derived fibroblasts and iPSCs from skin biopsies. Fibroblasts and iPSCs from twenty idiopathic PD patients and five controls from one U.S. site are currently available for request from this ancillary study. In order to provide cell lines to as many qualified researchers as possible, PPMI prioritized the expansion and characterization of these iPSC and fibroblast resources by WiCell and the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository (RUCDR), respectively.

The second ancillary study was conducted in collaboration with Cellular Dynamics International (CDI). This expanded ancillary study used a blood-based collection protocol and was carried out at ten international sites. The sites participating in this ancillary study collected blood for iPSC generation from 137 participants across all PPMI study arms. The iPSCs generated in collaboration with CDI are available for request by qualified researchers. All PPMI cell lines are housed at the biorepository at Indiana University. All applications for PPMI cell lines are reviewed by the PPMI Biospecimen Review Committee (BRC). To apply for access to PPMI cell lines, please visit http://www.ppmi-info.org/access-data-specimens/request-cell-lines/.

Authors: N.K. POLINSKI4, T. LUDWIG5, T. FOROUD1, M. FRASIER4, K. MAREK2, A. REIMER4, D. SMITH1, C. WEGEL1

Affiliations: 1Indiana Univ., Indianapolis, IN; 2Inst. for Neurodegenerative Disorders, New Haven, CT; 3Natl. Inst. of Neurolog. Dis. and Stroke, Bethesda, MD; 4Michael J. Fox Fndn., New York, NY 5WiCell, Madison, WI

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