The Ubern team is primarily contributing to intervertebral disc (IVD) cells that were isolated with written consent from patients undergoing spinal surgery. These cells were collected from peripheral blood and from the removed IVD tissue during discectomy surgery. Dr. Julien Guerrero, the post-doctoral researcher in my team, ensured that these cell isolations could be performed with the necessary quality controls and also could be delivered on time. These cells were then the basis to derive induced the pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for the project. This next important step in the overall series of working packages is now in progress in the team of Jean-Marc Le Maitre and Romain Desprait at the INSERM in Montpellier. My team and Marianna Tryfonidou, the consortium leader, have been focusing on how to isolate and characterize a relatively recently detected tissue-specific progenitor cell population in the center of the IVD. These cells, which were firstly described by Prof. Dai Sakai and his team from Japan, are multipotent and can form colony-forming units (CFUs), and are positive for a typical endothelial-derived surface marker, angiopoietin receptor 1 (Tie2). The latter is also very unusual for the IVD as it originates from the notochord, which gives the structure to embryonic bodies. However, these Tie2+ cells are relatively rare in the IVD (1-5%) but also decrease rapidly with age. A sub-aim was to compare donor-matched iPSC derived from these Tie2+ cells with mononuclear cells in the peripheral blood. Due to the close collaboration with the clinicians, we were able to deliver primary cells from spinal trauma surgery with ethical approval to the specialists at INSERM that generated the iPSCs.