Science Pools $1.8B in Data to Build a Living Cell Model

Biohub, a nonprofit institute that combines AI and biology, has launched a program called the Virtual Biology Initiative. The U.S. Department of Energy, known as DOE, is a partner. So is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the main U.S. medical research agency. Google DeepMind, Google's AI research lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a drug-discovery company that uses AI, are also partners. Meta, the company behind Facebook, joined as well. Together, the program totals $1.8 billion in funding, data, computation, and new measurement technology. DOE will invest more than $500 million over five years in lab measurement and computation. Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs, and Meta together are putting in $300 million. Biohub itself contributes $500 million, with $400 million earmarked for new measurement technology. The goal is to gather enough data to train a predictive model of a living cell. The model would show how a cell reacts to a drug or another intervention.

Investments like this usually go unnoticed — there is no model and no release to look at. But without data on this scale, there is nothing to train a predictive cell model on. The results will only show up years from now. None of the partners is a startup. Most are government agencies and large research institutes.