The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), in collaboration with partners 10x Genomics, Ultima Genomics, and a group of leading researchers, has launched the Billion Cells Project, an effort to generate an unprecedented one billion cell dataset to fuel rapid progress in AI model development in biology.

Once completed, this single-cell data set will bring critical new data and resolution to multiple domains of biology that need comprehensive resources such as mapping genetic perturbations across diverse cell types and tissues. Critically, the scale and cohesion of the data made possible by current and future contributions to the Billion Cells Project will deliver the volume of data with greater consistency than past efforts to better enable researchers to train AI models and make transformative discoveries across precision medicine and functional genomics.

“CZI’s Billion Cells Project illustrates the power of collaboration to make previously unfathomable amounts of single-cell data available for researchers, which will help clarify our understanding of the fundamental biology underpinning human health and disease while supercharging efforts at the intersection of AI and biology,” said Jonah Cool, Cell Science Senior Science Program Officer at CZI. “Biology not only needs more data – the field needs more data faster and in interoperable formats to support AI models that address specific problems, and this project represents a unique approach to scaling and standardizing scientific outputs for AI and more.”

Creating a Roadmap to Guide Drug Development

Data generated from the Billion Cells Project will be used to train new virtual cell models using CZI’s computing system to derive greater insight into the vast dataset. As part of its commitment to open science to accelerate research and make science more inclusive, CZI plans to make the results from this initiative open-source and freely available to help scientists around the world make new discoveries about human biology.

“This project will provide a necessary scale of data to understand the functional effects of human genetic variants and characterize the genetic drivers of human disease,” said Alexander Marson, Director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology and collaborator. “Ultimately, the Billion Cells Project will also be a functional roadmap to guide drug development, identifying targets to restore diseased cells to health.”

The collaboration will use 10x Genomics’ Chromium GEM-X technology for single-cell analysis, while sequencing will be performed on the UG 100, an ultra-high throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform developed by Ultima Genomics.

As the Billion Cells Project progresses, CZI anticipates forming additional partnerships with industry and academia to ensure the timely delivery of its goals.

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