February 8, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is rolling out fast. The project launched in September 2016 by Priscilla Chan, a physician, and her husband, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced today the first cohort of 47 Biohub investigators.
In September, Chan and Zuckerberg announced the Initiative and pledged $3 billion towards basic science research over the next 10 years. It has the ambitious goal that by the end of the century, all diseases can be cured, prevented or managed. It also announced that it had pledged $600 million in support of the Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub, an independent research center that will coordinate activities between scientists at University of California San Francisco, UC Berkeley and Stanford University.
Today the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub announced its first cohort of engineers, scientists and technologists. This represents a commitment of more than $50 million. Each of the CZ Biohub Investigators receive a five-year appointment and up to $1.5 million in funding.
The investigators were chosen from various departments at the three universities, including biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics. There were more than 700 applications screened by an international panel of 60 scientists and engineers.
“CZ Biohub Investigators share our vision of a planet without disease,” said Joseph DeRisi, co-president of CZ Biohub and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UC San Francisco, in a statement. “To realize this vision, we are giving some of the world’s most creative and brilliant researchers access to groundbreaking technology and the freedom to pursue high-risk research. CZ Biohub Investigators will challenge traditional thinking in pursuit of radical discoveries that will make even the most stubborn and deadly diseases treatable.”
The CZ Biohub website indicates that the 47 Investigators includes 22 junior investigators, 25 senior investigators, 21 women and 26 men.
“The CZ Biohub has chosen some of Berkeley’s best and most innovative researchers, who offer an amazing breadth of expertise,” said Nichols Dirks, Chancellor of UC Berkeley, in a statement on the CZ Biohub website. “This first cohort of investigators illustrates the potential and promise of the CZ Biohub to push the boundaries of biomedical research, and to accelerate the development of breakthrough scientific and medical advancements, applications and therapeutics for the public’s benefit.”
A sampling of the 47 investigators includes:
1. Adam Abate, with UCSF, who is “now developing ways of printing organ-like structures by the precise placement of different cell types at defined positions.”
Catherine Blish, with Stanford, who “aims to build an atlas of host-pathogen interactions to serve as a template to elicit immune responses that will promote pathogen eradication.”
Hana El-Samad, with UCSF, who is “embarking on a major effort to build de novo synthetic circuits consisting of biomolecules that can implement feedback control on demand.”
Amy Herr, UC Berkeley, focused on “protein cytometry, as exemplified by single-cell electrophoresis followed by antibody probing to simultaneously achieve high specificity and high sensitivity.”
Rikky Muller, UC Berkeley, “developing new wireless microsystems that directly interface with the brain for long-term, minimally-invasive neurological recording.”
Alice Ting, Stanford, who “develops, scales up, and broadly disseminates molecular technologies for mapping cells and functional circuits, as illustrated by her biotin-based method for protein mapping in living cells.”
A full list with bios can be found at http://czbiohub.org/investigators/.
In addition to the grants, the CZ Biohub is developing policies regarding publishing results. The CZ Biohub Investigators agreed to “make their draft publications widely available through pre-print servers so their findings can inform the work of other researchers and accelerate scientific discovery.” Part of the idea is to have a collaborative culture.
To further that collaboration, the CZ Biohub plans to create shared technology platforms available to Bay Area scientists.
In addition to the work of these investigators, there are two large-scale collaborative projects, the Infectious Diseases Initiative and the Cell Atlas. The Cell Atlas is intended to map all the cell types of the human body. The Infectious Diseases Initiative breaks into four key areas: new detection technologies, new treatments, new preventions, and new approaches to rapid responses to new threats.
“We are conducting research that helps solve big health problems,” the CZ Biohub indicated. “We find and support the best and brightest biologists, scientists, engineers and technologists. Our culture emphasizes intellectual freedom and collaboration. We provide our team with the best scientific tools—and when the right tools don’t exist, we will invent them.”
