Chan Zuckerberg initiative joins Scale Bio's ‘100 Million Cell Challenge’ to accelerate single cell genomics research

The '100 Million Cell Challenge,' launched last month, aims to push the boundaries of single cell genomics research by encouraging large-scale projects across diverse biological systems. With the support of CZI and other program collaborators, Ultima Genomics and NVIDIA, the initiative is poised to make an even greater impact on the scientific community, helping to increase our understanding of complex biological systems and catalyze new discoveries, from basic research to translational medicine.

Giovanna Prout, CEO of Scale Bio, expressed her enthusiasm for the partnership: "CZI's commitment to this challenge not only validates the importance of large-scale single cell studies, it also significantly expands the scope of what researchers can achieve. Through the 100 million cell challenge, Scale Bio and our collaborators hope to catalyze discoveries that could reshape precision medicine and our understanding of complex biological systems."

The scientific community has responded with overwhelming interest, submitting 40 projects spanning a wide spectrum of research disciplines. The submitted projects demonstrate the breadth and depth of potential applications for large-scale single cell analysis. Researchers have proposed studies ranging from creating comprehensive atlases of various organ systems to investigating cellular heterogeneity in disease states and exploring cross-species comparisons in regenerative processes.

The '100 Million Cell Challenge' is enabled by Scale Bio's new QuantumScale technology, a single cell RNA sequencing solution capable of processing up to 2 million cells per run. This new workflow was designed to empower researchers to pursue ambitious, large-scale single cell omics projects by offering unparalleled library preparation efficiency, top notch data quality, and low costs.