Abstract Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models have accelerated translational research in neurodegenerative disorders and immune cell therapeutics. IPSCs can be generated from a tissue biopsy or peripheral blood mononuclear cells and can be directed to differentiate into functional tissues for disease modeling across myriad organ systems. There is a major underexplored opportunity for translational cancer research using iPSCs developed from carriers of germline mutations associated with cancer predisposition. Patients receiving care for known or suspected cancer-associated germline mutations at the Mays Cancer Center were invited to participate in a study aiming to develop a population-based bank of iPSCs for cancer research. Blood samples were collected from patients in the high-risk clinic, undergoing treatment in the medical oncology breast or gynecology clinics, or from men being screened for prostate cancer. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were viably frozen, and thawed for reprogramming using the CytoTune 2.0 Sendai Reprogramming Kit. To date, we have developed ∼20 iPSC lines from individuals from our local community, all with high-risk cancer mutations or a strong family history of cancer. The cohort includes carriers of germline mutations in BRCA2 (n=5) plus other DNA damage repair genes (BARD1, BRCA1, BRIP1 and RAD51C). The majority of the individuals self-identified as Hispanic and two patients had a strong family history of cancer that could not be explained by the genes included in current panel testing. The new lines are undergoing full characterization to demonstrate pluripotency and genome stability, and establish genetic ancestries. Ongoing studies are leveraging this resource to model the earliest stages of breast, fallopian, prostate and pancreatic tumorigenesis in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. In the future, we expect this growing resource to contribute to dissecting the functional tissue-specific effects of cancer predisposition mutations. We expect use of this resource will identify novel opportunities for targeted therapeutics and/or diagnostics that should benefit multiple populations, including patients in our catchment area. Citation Format: Kate Lawrenson, Jessica Jones, Marcela Mazo-Canola, Terry Bakewell, Erick Reynero, Soha Wahab, Teresa Johnson-Pais, Nur Yucer, Sueanne Chear, Alyssa Okimoto, Li-Hua Yen, Gail Tomlinson, Katrin Eurich, Yasmin Lyons, Georgia McCann, Edward Kost, Christopher Navara, Robin J. Leach, Simon Gayther. The South Texas iPSC Cohort for Cancer Research abstract. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2026; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2026 Apr 17-22; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2026;86(7 Suppl):Abstract nr 832.
Lawrenson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.