The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is an international project with the goal of creating a kind of reference map of all cells and their different developmental stages. The purpose is to better understand how cells, tissues, and organs function and develop, as well as mechanisms for various diseases.
40 Articles
It is, among other things, new powerful AI tools that have given the enormous project a push forward. In a total of 40 scientific articles, the latest advances in the project to map all human cells are being published. Researchers compare the development to a world atlas.
A map from the 1500s is not worthless, but there is quite a lot of information that is missing or is very low-resolution. What we have now is more like Google Maps, where we can zoom in to street level and even see how traffic changes over the day, says Aviv Regev, professor of biology at MIT and board member of the Human Cell Atlas at a digital press conference.
Chronic Disease
An example of what is now being published concerns cells in the gastrointestinal tract. By comparing cells from healthy individuals with those from sick individuals, researchers have gained knowledge about, among other things, inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. The hope is to be able to use the lessons learned to develop new treatments.
One of the studies also shows how the placenta functions at the cellular level and how it develops to provide the embryo with nutrition and protection, and another how cells in the lung change after covid-19.
So far, 100 million cells from over 10,000 adult individuals from around the world have been used as a basis. The studies are being published in, among other things, the journal Nature.
