Human Cell Atlas Moves Closer to ‘Revolutionizing’ Healthcare and Cell Mapping

The Human Cell Atlas Consortium was created in 2016 to map all types of cells—the basic units of life. Now more than 3,600 experts have taken a significant step by publishing more than 40 new articles with information about the development of the skeleton, placenta and intestines.

These progresses towards definitive cell mapping of the human body, for which, among other tools, artificial intelligence was used, are described in detail in Nature and other publications of the editorial team. It is an open, ethical, fair and representative cellular atlas of humanity.

“This initiative has already changing our understanding of human health. By creating a comprehensive reference map of the healthy human body—a sort of Google Maps of cell biology—you establish a benchmark for discovering and understanding the changes that underlie health and disease,” said Sarah Teichmann, the company’s founding co-president of the project.

Atlas (HCA) is called The “missing link” between genes, diseases and treatmentsand its decoding will have a transformative effect on biology and medicine, says the scientist now working at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (UK): “This is already influencing almost every aspect of biology and health

which will ultimately lead to a new era of precision medicine. We expect their information to revolutionize healthcare around the world in the long term.”

100 million cells

It is estimated that the human body Made up of 37.2 billion cells, each cell type has a unique function.. Understanding the complexity of the body at the cellular level “has been a challenge” but is essential to the advancement of medical science. It is for this purpose that the Human Cell Atlas consortium was created, consisting of experts from 102 countries, including Spain, who have collaborated to date to develop profiles of more than 100 million cells from more than 10,000 people.

The consortium has been publishing various thematic cell atlases for many years. As Teichmann explains, the biological networks of the consortium create 18 atlases of tissues, organs and systems that will ultimately make up the Atlas of Human Cells. The community has prepared four maps (lung, brain, organoid, retina), the rest are still in development.

“We expect that this first draft of the atlas “It will be completed in the next year or so.”and then its resolution, anatomical coverage and sample diversity will continue to improve—over time, scientists believe there will be a second and third version. What is published this Wednesday represents another important step towards creating the first complete atlas.

Thus, the articles demonstrate important achievements in three aspects: mapping of individual tissues or organs of an adult; human tissue development; and development of new analytical methods pioneers, including those based on artificial intelligence/machine learning.

It also mentions aspects of justice and ethics. Mapping 1.6 million intestinal cells. One study details a cellular atlas of the human gut based on spatial and single-cell data from 1.6 million cells. According to the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK), it is the most complete to date.

Through this, scientists led by Amanda Oliver have identified a type of intestinal cell that may be involved in inflammation, providing a valuable resource for research and ultimately treatment of conditions such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

According to the authors, by better understanding this cycle of intestinal inflammation, it may be possible to find new ways to prevent or treat it, and perhaps apply this knowledge to other tissues and conditions. The collection of papers also includes new maps of human tissue during development.

Among these is the first on skeletal growth, which shows how it is formed, sheds light on the origins of arthritis, and identifies the cells involved in skeletal conditions. Another paper describes a multi-omics atlas of the placenta in the first trimester, which includes information about the genetic programs that control its development and its functions in providing nutrients and protection to the embryo.

The collection, which also covers the lung’s response to Covid-19, introduces new artificial intelligence techniques to better understand, classify, and search for cell types in this massive map. “This is a defining moment for the HCA community,” says Aviv Regev, also a co-founder of the initiative, in a Wellcome statement.

“If the Human Genome Project gave us the “book of life,” then the Human Cell Atlas reflects how every cell in the body reads that book. This is now possible only through global collaboration, technological and computational advances, and scientific research on a large scale. scale,” says the consortium’s website.