HCANext10: The Rosetta Stone for Predictive Biology

On 17-18 November, HCA leadership will meet with key stakeholders at Wellcome in London to share the vision for the Rosetta Stone of predictive biology, and develop a strategic roadmap for the next decade to realise this vision.

“We are grateful to Wellcome for bringing together HCA leadership, leading research organizations, and funders to help shape the next decade of the Human Cell Atlas,” said Muzlifah Haniffa, Co-Chair of the HCA, and Deputy Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK. “Just as the original Rosetta Stone unlocked the meaning of ancient scripts, HCA 2.0 aims to decode the language of human biology by integrating multi-modal omics data, genetics, and tissue pathology at unprecedented scale using AI. Our ambition is to create the Rosetta Stone for predictive biology, laying the foundation for a deeper understanding of how human cells within tissue contexts function to improve health and treat disease.”

Alexandra-Chloé Villani, Co-Chair of HCA, Institute Member at the Broad Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, USA, said “To create the Rosetta Stone for predictive biology, we will generate AI-ready data from tens of billions of cells, charting the diversity of cell states, their organisation and their interactions in health and disease. This hugely valuable data will feed directly into a new generation of AI models of virtual cells and tissues. Ultimately, we want to move beyond describing human biology to predicting how it behaves, understanding what goes wrong in disease, and discovering how we might restore health.”

Participants at the strategic meeting at Wellcome will include representatives from the HCA Organizing Committee, Regional and Biological Networks and Working Group leaders, convening with leading research organisations and funders, to plan an atlas that benefits all of humanity. From its inception, the Human Cell Atlas has been built on the principle that understanding human biology requires a truly global scientific effort and the vision for HCA 2.0 reinforces this.

“With the continued support of Wellcome and our international partners, HCA 2.0 offers an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen scientific capacity in low- and middle-income countries, expand access to cutting-edge technologies, and empower the next generation of scientists around the world. By investing in people, infrastructure, and equitable partnerships, we can ensure that the future of predictive biology is shaped by – and ultimately benefits – communities across the globe,” said Shyam Prabhakar, Co Vice-Chair of the HCA and Associate Director of Spatial and Single Cell Systems at the A* Genome Institute of Singapore.

Human biology is shaped by environments, lifestyle, age, and disease, yet these natural perturbations remain underrepresented in datasets that underpin modern biomedical research. By increasing the representation of different communities across the globe, HCA 2.0 will help to reveal genetic and environmental influences on health and disease in specific human populations, to improve healthcare.

Holger Heyn, Co Vice-Chair of the HCA and Professor at the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG) in Barcelona, Spain, said: “HCA 2.0 will help close the gap in dataset representation by mapping cellular and tissue biology across diverse human populations, ages, health and pathologies, revealing how such natural variation influences cell and tissue function. By building a representative foundation for predictive biology, we will enable AI models and future medical advances that are more accurate, inclusive, and clinically relevant.”

The strategic policy framework established in London will then feed into broader consortium discussions at the next HCA General Meeting, to be held on 29 June to 1 July 2027, in The Hague, the Netherlands.