UChicago to partner on new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative biomedical research hub

CZ Biohub Chicago will be led by Prof. Shana O. Kelley of Northwestern University; Jeffrey Hubbell of the University of Chicago and Rashid Bashir of the University of Illinois played key roles in bringing together dozens of researchers from across the three universities to envision and plan the Biohub.

The center will initially focus on inflammation and the function of the immune system. Inflammation and overactive immune cells play a key role in many diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and are also implicated in organ failure, diseases of the skin, Type 2 diabetes and severe infectious diseases like COVID-19.

But inducing inflammation in a controlled way can also be used to combat disease: in cancer immunotherapy, the immune system is unleashed and directed toward tumors.

“We’re thrilled to be part of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, which will galvanize multidisciplinary research and drive more progress than any one of these institutions could have achieved on its own,” said Kelley. “The scientific challenge we’re exploring—to develop new tools to better measure tissues and gain insights into inflammation—can only be solved by interdisciplinary collaboration, has large engineering challenges to surmount, and is wildly, but not impossibly, ambitious.”

Through advances in genomics, molecular biology, and most recently, single-cell biology, scientists have made great strides in understanding the structure and function of individual cells. But our organs are made up of specialized tissues that contain billions of cells—our heart muscle alone is estimated to comprise more than two billion cells—so gaining insights about how tissues work as a whole, in both health and disease, is an enormous challenge.

To begin to crack this problem, the engineered platforms that will be developed at the CZ Biohub Chicago will combine several state-of-the-art technologies to make the first holistic and direct measurements of inflammation in human tissue. These tools will allow researchers to monitor the activity of immune cells within tissues in real time, with the goal of finding ways to steer the immune system away from the “tipping points” that lead to inflammatory disorders. With a more comprehensive understanding of this biology, new approaches to treating a range of diseases will be made possible, with the ultimate aim of making inflammation-driven diseases more treatable and preventable.

“We are excited about the opportunities that the Biohub will bring to the field of immunology, as well as for the Chicago and Illinois regional research community,” said Prof. Juan de Pablo, the Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories, and Global Initiatives at the University of Chicago and a member of the planning committee for the Biohub. “Attracting this hub to Chicago represents the culmination of efforts from many scientists and engineers across all three partner institutions, and moving forward, its unique structure will allow for rich cross-pollination across disciplinary and industry lines.”

The CZ Biohub Chicago will work with CZI teams, including the science technology team, which aspires to advance biomedical research and develop technologies to understand, observe, measure, and analyze any biological process within the human body — across spatial scales and in real time.

“A thorough understanding of tissue inflammation is a holy grail of human biology—it would lead the way to design treatments for a myriad of diseases and disorders,” said Jeffrey Hubbell, the Eugene Bell Professor in Tissue Engineering with the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and member of the executive committee for the Chicago CZI Biohub. “This hub will allow us to take significant steps forward in the field of immunology, enabling measurements that are now impossible and insights that have previously been unattainable.”

Over the next decade, CZ Science is focused on understanding the mysteries of the cell and how cells interact within systems, which could lead to groundbreaking discoveries that will help cure, prevent or manage all disease by the end of this century. To achieve this mission, CZI builds open source software tools to accelerate science and generate more accurate and biologically important sources of data, funds scientific research worldwide to advance the frontiers of knowledge, and supports research that can’t be done in conventional environments. 

The inaugural Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco was founded in 2016 in partnership with Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of California, San Francisco. Its cell atlas project led the development of the first whole organism cell atlases in humans, mice, flies and lemurs, and also led to creation of maps of the internal cell architecture of cells. Its infectious disease project helped accelerate California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bay Area and statewide, and develops technologies to identify emerging disease outbreaks around the world.