The NIMH initiated its five year """"""""Diagnostic Centers for Psychiatric Linkage Studies"""""""" cooperative agreement with ten sites in fiscal year 1989. Three centers were selected to coordinate the assessment and collection of data from affected sibling pairs and family members with Alzheimer's disease, three centers for probands and family members with schizophrenia, and four centers with bipolar disorder. The goals of the initiative are to 1) develop a set of common protocols to assess subjects; 2) to develop a comprehensive set of reliable and valid assessment instruments; 3) to design and implement an ascertainment plan for a collection of a large number of families affected with each of the three disorders in order to have sufficient power to perform genetic analyses such as linkage studies under conditions of heterogeneity; and 4) to provide the scientific community with a national resource of DNA contained in immortalized cell lines as well as diagnostic information on probands and their families. This contract was awarded in September 1990 to Coriell Institute for Medical Research to support the efforts of the ten sites in achieving the goals of the cooperative agreement. Since 1990 Coriell 1) continues to receive blood for transformation from the ten diagnostic center sites; 2) stores and ships cell lines and DNA to approved recipients; and 3) has established a computerized database that provides summary information on each cell line.
