World's largest public stem cells bank has been opened in California. Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) of Madison and its partners has opened the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine hPSC Repository having 300 stem cell lines aimed at 11 common diseases and disorders.

By February 2016, the bank expects to have at least 750 lines. Jonathan Thomas, head of the governing board of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, said, "We believe the bank will be an extraordinarily important resource in helping advance the use of stem cell tools for the study of diseases and finding new ways to treat them".

More than $32 million have been given to fund the stem cell bank and $16 million from that amount are allocated to CDI to manufacture the stem cells using its technology. Research institutions and drug companies can use the cells for the purpose of developing drugs.

The cells are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). They are taken from a sample of blood and then are turned into an embryonic state and then reprogrammed into virtually any cell type in human body.

The first stem cell lines can come from health donors as well as from the ones who are suffering from certain diseases. The cell lines will be received through tissue samples that were gathered by researchers at four California universities. CDI turns the samples into specific cell lines and are stored and distributed by the Coriell Institute for Medical Research at the Buck Institute in Novato, California.

"IPSCs are proving to be powerful tools for disease modeling, drug discovery and the development of cell therapies, capturing human disease and individual genetic variability in ways that are not possible with other cellular models", said Kaz Hirao, CDI chairman.