A $3-Billion Plan to Cure Disease Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Will Invest Proceeds from Facebook Shares

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MEDICAL RESEARCH A $3-billion plan to cure disease Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will invest proceeds from Facebook shares.

BY ERIKA CHECK HAYDEN consulted over the past year. “I am sure it The biohub will first focus on creating a will provoke people to think, can we actually human-cell atlas that will use technologies such hey are not the first billionaires to do that?” as single-cell genetic sequencing and gene edit- try to disrupt science. But Facebook The pair’s plans involve a who’s who of ing to examine cells in minute detail. It will also co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his researchers. Neurobiologist Cori Bargmann, work to develop new ways to detect, respond to, Twife, physician and educator Priscilla Chan, an architect of the US National Institutes treat and prevent infectious disease. have enlisted a ‘dream team’ of scientific lead- of Health’s (NIH’s) contributions to the US ers to oversee a US$3-billion effort to boost government BRAIN Initiative, will become KNOWLEDGE SHARING basic research. president of science for the Chan Zuckerberg Bargmann hopes to draw on the project’s “We see this work as being led and done by Initiative. The couple have also consulted Silicon Valley roots to address issues such as scientists,” Chan told Nature before the couple a host of other biology notables, including the dearth of scalable tools that can be widely unveiled the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s plans Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, and used across fields. “In my lab, everyone now on 21 September. She and her husband created Arthur Levinson, chief executive of Google’s writes code; that’s a bit like everyone making the initiative last December to invest proceeds Calico and former chief executive of biotech- their own soap,” Bargmann says. “We should from their Facebook shares to aid causes such nology firm Genentech. Princeton University be finding ways of doing this that are general as education, health research and Internet president emeritus Shirley Tilghman and and powerful, that allow us to interact and connectivity. Nobel-prizewinning cancer biologist Harold share our knowledge.” Zuckerberg and Chan have set themselves Varmus are on the project’s scientific advisory Silicon Valley companies have drawn heavily an audacious goal: curing, preventing or man- board. on some areas of scientific expertise — luring aging all disease by the end of the century. Bargmann says that the organization intends away talent in fields such as machine learn- They intend to get there by coaxing teams with to set up “challenge networks” of interdiscipli- ing. Google’s Verily has also recruited top- diverse expertise to collaborate on developing nary researchers from different institutions. The flight biomedical researchers to work on ideas new tools and technologies — something that scientists will commit to work on problems such such as the Baseline Study, a longitudinal scientists say is sorely needed. The $3-billion as neurodegeneration, which could require con- health project that has been running in a pilot commitment announced today will cover the tributions from basic biologists, clinicians and phase since 2014. But the company has not project’s first 10 years. engineers. The initiative has also created the published any data from that project, and sci- “Building tools requires bringing scientists Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a US$600-million, entists at Verily have said little publicly about and engineers together in large numbers for 10-year partnership with Stanford University their work. large periods of time, and that’s not something in California, the University of California, DeRisi says that, by contrast, the biohub most science funding is set up to do,” Zucker- San Francisco (UCSF), and the University of will disseminate data as broadly and as rapidly berg told Nature. “That emerged to us as a big California, Berkeley. UCSF biochemist Joseph as possible. The initiative also hopes to avoid opening where we could help grow this move- DeRisi and Stanford bioengineer Stephen some of the administrative hurdles that ment among other scientific funders.” Quake are leading the effort. hamper scientists’ productivity. Applica- tions for individual investigator awards, FILLING THE GAPS A couple with an for instance, will be simpler than NIH The initiative’s approach stands in stark audacious goal. applications, and some investiga- contrast to some other Silicon Valley-led tor awards will be reserved for non- efforts to revamp science. Take Google’s par- tenured scientists, so that the research- ent company, Alphabet, which has closely ers aren’t competing with their more guarded its biomedical-research enter- senior colleagues. The biohub will prises — including its life-sciences also create some lab-leader posi- company Verily, and its anti- tions for researchers who don’t

DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY ACKER/BLOOMBERG DANIEL ageing research company Calico, want to teach or write grant whose creation prompted TIME applications. magazine to ask, “Can Google Lander predicts that such solve death?”. moves will be especially wel- Chan and Zuckerberg “have comed by young scientists, set out a goal that makes you who, he says, are clamouring gulp, and then they’ve said, to work more collaboratively. what are the missing pieces “Younger scientists are tre- we need to get there?”, says mendously excited to figure Eric Lander, president of out how to work together, the Broad Institute of MIT but there haven’t been that and Harvard in Cambridge, many vehicles to support Massachusetts, and one of these kinds of approaches.” ■ dozens of scientists whom See go.nature.com/2dzc0I8 for the couple have quietly a longer version of this story.