Biohub

The Virtual Immune System is our flagship effort to model the incredible complexity of human immunity. By combining our large-scale data generation platforms with powerful AI models, we aim to build a dynamic, systems-level understanding of how the immune system adapts in health and disease.

We launched the Virtual Immune System—a flagship effort to model the incredible complexity of the human immune system. By building AI models of how our cells interact, we can simulate immune therapies, reprogram cells, and prevent disease before it even begins. #AI #ML #SciTech #Biology

Our mission: help scientists cure or prevent all diseases. With AI advancing rapidly, that goal is closer than ever—and we're pushing the frontiers of biology and AI to get there. #AI #ML #SciTech #Biology

I joined CZI because I believe in the power of science to transform lives. My passion for science started early, inspired by my dad, a cardiothoracic surgeon who showed me how basic research changes lives—and why supporting discovery matters. That's why I'm so excited about the next chapter of our work. Today, Mark and Priscilla are committing the vast majority of their resources to Biohub, our initiative combining frontier AI and frontier biology. We're bringing together scientists, engineers, and AI researchers to tackle some of the most complex challenges in biology and medicine. I'm excited to welcome Alex Rives as Head of Science along with the EvolutionaryScale team, giving us the unique ability to push both frontier AI and experimental biology forward simultaneously. We're already seeing what's possible when you bring together AI research and engineering, state-of-the-art imaging technology, and unprecedented scale of compute. VariantFormer translates an individual's DNA into predicted gene expression across tissues, creating "digital twins" for disease research. scLDM generates realistic single-cell data on demand, letting researchers run virtual experiments before lab work. And our Virtual Immune System models immune complexity in silico, moving immunology from describing what happened to predicting what will happen—opening doors to engineering better therapies and preventing disease earlier. Each of these builds on nearly a decade of systematic investment: funding basic research, creating the world's largest single-cell datasets, establishing the largest GPU cluster for biological research, and building experimental platforms that generate the causal data AI models need to learn from. Thanks to Mark and Priscilla's bold vision, boundless ambition, and tremendous generosity, we are uniquely positioned to make AI-accelerated biology a reality, and I’m excited for the discoveries to come. https://bit.ly/4nOUGO4

We have been working in science for nearly a decade, and we’ve seen incredible traction. We’ve funded research to fill critical gaps in basic science, created our own scientific research labs and built the world’s largest single-cell dataset. While each of these efforts has driven discoveries on its own, we believe that bringing them together will unlock the promise of AI-powered biology and drive even greater breakthroughs. That’s where Biohub comes in. Mark and I are committing the vast majority of our philanthropic resources to Biohub — our first of its kind initiative combining frontier AI and frontier biology. As part of this next chapter, we’re thrilled to welcome Alex Rives as our Head of Science, and the EvolutionaryScale team to help us lead this new era of AI-powered biology. Their expertise in building advanced AI models for proteins and genomes will help unlock discoveries that once felt out of reach. We’re building something that doesn’t exist anywhere else—AI-powered tools, datasets, and experimental biology working together to: ✨ Simulate virtual cells and a virtual immune system 💡 Generate new biological insights faster than ever 🚀 Accelerate discoveries that design treatments to change lives Almost 10 years ago, Mark and I announced our mission to help scientists cure or prevent all disease within our children’s lifetime. With Biohub, we’re getting there faster than we ever thought possible.

For nearly a decade, we’ve brought together world-class teams from top research universities to tackle complex biological challenges. Along the way, we’ve driven breakthroughs with big impact, including the development of biosensors that monitor inflammation in tissues in real time, and CELLxGENE, the world’s largest single-cell dataset, with over 125 million cells and counting. With advances in AI, we’re entering the next evolution of our science work — and giving it a name that reflects both where we started and where we’re headed: Biohub We’re building Biohub to be the first research lab to fully integrate frontier AI with frontier biology. Our tools will then generate new datasets to train biological AI models capable of simulating virtual cells and immune systems, ultimately designing treatments to change lives. We’re also thrilled to welcome Alex Rives as Head of Science, along with the EvolutionaryScale team. Their work in AI models for proteins and genomes — including the ESM Cambrian and ESM3 models — will strengthen Biohub’s ability to predict, simulate, and design biology in entirely new ways. Our mission has always been to help cure or prevent disease. With the convergence of AI and biology, what once seemed possible in a century may now be achievable much sooner.

“Doing” science can often be tedious and labor-intensive. At the Biohub Network, scientists and engineers create open-access tools to accelerate scientific discovery. 🏃 Mass spectrometry, for example, is a powerful technique that lets scientists determine the molecular ingredients of just about any substance. But mass spectrometers are sensitive instruments, requiring constant monitoring, often across days or weeks, to avoid muddled results and wasted precious samples. To solve this problem, researchers at the San Francisco Biohub created Rapid QC-MS, an automated quality control system that helps ensure mass spec experiments run smoothly, without the need for hypervigilance.  Watch Biohub scientist Brian C. DeFelice explain in the video below. #MassSpectrometry #OpenSource #ScienceVideos #CZBiohubSF 

In 2018, Joe DeRisi published a paper finding that a drug used to treat urinary tract infections in Europe and Asia might be effective against a pathogen called Balamuthia mandrillaris, a “brain-eating” amoeba. That paper sat largely unnoticed for three years, until a middle-aged man walked into a San Francisco emergency room with seizures. This video tells the rest of the gripping story! It was a race against the clock as the patient’s physician, Natasha Spottiswoode of University of California, San Francisco, and DeRisi, president emeritus of the San Francisco Biohub, worked under extraordinary circumstances. Watch the video ▶️ https://lnkd.in/g9bdUsJk #balamuthia #amoeba #ameba #InfectiousDisease #metagenomics #mNGS #CZBiohubSF

⏰ The deadline is approaching to apply to be an Investigator at the New York Biohub!