The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and the Helmsley Charitable Trust – two major multibillion-dollar philanthropic organizations – are collaborating as part of an effort to map all the cells in the human body.
Dubbed the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), the global scientist-led research collaboration is attempting to create a definitive reference guide of cell types, numbers, locations, relationships and molecular components.
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CZI and the Helmsley Charitable Trust have opened up requests for applications for two complementary, but distinct pathways to support development of the HCA, respectively called the Seed Networks and the Gut Cell atlas.
The deadline for project applications, which can go for up to three years, is Nov. 13.
The Helmsley Charitable Trust’s participation in the research collaborative is another component of the organization’s work to support development of new treatments for Crohn’s disease.
The trust’s funding of a Gut Cell Atlas would potentially be able to advance a precision medicine approach to Crohn’s disease by helping researchers better link cell states, tissue function and the emergence of disease.
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“The Human Cell Atlas is transforming what we know about how cells change and cause disease, and there is an urgent need to map the cells of the gut at high resolution,” Garabet Yeretssian, Director of the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Crohn’s Disease Program, said in a statement.
“By creating a Gut Cell Atlas, there is tremendous potential to better understand Crohn’s disease and gut health issues and develop better treatments for patients.”
While this most recent support represents the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s first major support of the HCA, CZI has been heavily involved in the project for a number of years.
CZI was founded in December 2015 and has a three-pronged focus to boost basic science, overhaul education and improve social justice and opportunity.
The organization has already announced support for 85 computational biology tools, as well as 38 pilot projects, to build technologies for the Human Cell Atlas.
CZI’s request for applications is searching for multi-disciplinary scientific teams to develop Seed Networks, which will be able to characterize any tissue in the healthy human body and collect data and develop frameworks necessary to continue to build the HCA.
“This is really amazing project, both for the scope, but also because it’s bringing together scientists from around the world and also being supported by a large group of international funders,” said Jonah Cool, CZI’s science program manager in a video outlining the RFA.
“The Seed Networks for the Human Cell Atlas is an effort to continue to growth and progress of the community, but also a way for new groups to get involved.”
Photo: ClaudioVentrella, Getty Images
