Two Global Stem Cell Core Facility Networks Win ISSCR's 2026 Public Service Award

Pluripotent stem cell research is built on a paradox: the techniques required to generate, culture, and quality-control human induced pluripotent stem cells are highly specialized, but the scientific questions those cells can answer are relevant to researchers across dozens of fields, institutions, and countries. For most of the field's history, that specialization created a practical barrier. Institutions with the resources and expertise to run high-quality core facilities had access to these tools; those without did not.

Two global networks - Stem Cell COREdinates and CorEUstem - spent years working to close that gap. The International Society for Stem Cell Research recognized that work at its 2026 award announcements, naming the two networks joint recipients of the ISSCR Public Service Award. They will be formally honored at the ISSCR 2026 Annual Meeting in Montreal on 8-11 July 2026.

From Isolation to Integration

Before these networks existed, stem cell core facilities operated largely independently. Each institution developed its own reprogramming methods, differentiation protocols, and quality control procedures. That fragmentation meant inconsistent results between sites, duplicated effort in protocol development, and wide disparities in capability between well-funded institutions and smaller research centers.

Together, the two networks now connect 79 core facilities across continents into a coordinated ecosystem. Members share protocols through platforms including StemBook, ISSCR Standards, and CorEUstem Protocols.io. They participate in multinational benchmarking studies that validate methods across sites - work that no single facility could conduct independently. They contribute to the hPSCreg.eu registry, which maintains records of cell lines to ensure traceability, donor protection, and transparency.

"By transforming isolated core facilities into a coordinated global network, they have elevated standards, strengthened reproducibility, and ensured that excellence in pluripotent stem cell research is accessible far beyond a handful of well-resourced institutions," said ISSCR President Hideyuki Okano. "Their work has built the technical and ethical foundation upon which future discoveries and therapies will stand."

The Numbers Behind the Impact

The collaborative infrastructure has produced measurable outputs. The networks have registered 3,936 patient-specific and control human induced pluripotent stem cell lines in hPSCreg.eu, along with 4,058 gene-edited lines including mutation corrections and custom reporter constructs. Those lines are available to the broader research community, reducing duplication and accelerating studies that would otherwise require each laboratory to generate its own starting material.

Training has scaled similarly. The networks collectively deliver more than 350 hands-on training sessions annually, reaching more than 740 scientists worldwide. That reach extends to institutions that would not otherwise have access to expert instruction in advanced stem cell techniques - a deliberate effort to reduce the resource disparities that have historically concentrated expertise in a small number of institutions.

The networks also cite a clinical-stage example of their influence: bemdaneprocel, now in a clinical trial for Parkinson's disease, was developed using standardized core facility platforms supported in part by the infrastructure these networks helped establish. Whether that example fully illustrates the networks' causal contribution to a specific therapeutic is difficult to verify, but it illustrates the type of translational pathway the shared infrastructure is designed to enable.

Standards, Ethics, and Access

Beyond technical harmonization, the networks have engaged in governance and ethical oversight work. Member facilities maintain quality control, regulatory compliance, and donor protection standards aligned with ISSCR guidelines. Protocols and guidance are disseminated openly, and ISSCR Standards have been translated into multiple languages to reduce barriers for facilities in non-English-speaking research environments.

A mentorship model pairs established core facilities with newer or smaller ones, and early-career scientists at member institutions receive structured support - an approach designed to address the leadership pipeline alongside the technical infrastructure.