Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York

Columbia University will join Rockefeller University and Yale University in the newest Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub) Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced in October. VP&S faculty member Andrea Califano, who has a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Florence in Italy, will be president of CZ Biohub New York.

The ultimate goal of CZ Biohub New York is to create new technologies to characterize and bioengineer immune cells to create disease-specific “cellular endoscopes” that can detect early stages of disease in cells, monitor cell changes, and resolve diseases before they become untreatable.

Dr. Califano, the Clyde’56 and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical Biology (in Systems Biology) and former chair of the Department of Systems Biology in VP&S, will lead CZ Biohub NY but remain on the VP&S faculty, where he is also professor of biomedical informatics, of biochemistry & molecular biophysics, and of medicine in the Institute for Cancer Genetics. 

CZ Biohub NY is the fourth research institute in the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, a ground-breaking collaborative model for scientific research. The network includes the first CZ Biohub, in San Francisco, and a second in Chicago. The third institute is the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging in Redwood City, California. Together, CZ Biohub Network institutions pursue science and technologies that quantify human biology in action to help researchers measure how cells and tissues function to increase understanding of health and disease. New York state and New York City have also contributed financial support for CZ Biohub NY.

CZ Biohub NY will first focus on learning more about the molecular memory and states of immune cells when they sense signals secreted by diseased cells and organs. This will help predict early signs of disease that are tissue-specific. Building on this, researchers will work to understand the mechanisms of immune cell trafficking to further direct cells to desired organs on demand and to sense novel disease signals they are not yet built to detect. This will help CZ Biohub NY to bioengineer immune cells that can travel to specific organs, sense any potential abnormalities, and then record information in their molecular state for easy detection from a simple blood draw—or by using non-invasive engineered devices—for further interpretation by scientists and, eventually, physicians.

CZ Biohub NY will initially apply these novel, technology-driven approaches to hard-to-detect cancers such as ovarian and pancreatic cancers; neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s; and aging and autoimmunity. The next step is further training immune cells to make targeted repairs, such as promoting inflammation at a tumor site to activate a robust immune response.

“Right now, diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s are often diagnosed after the onset of obvious symptoms, making them harder or even impossible to treat,” said CZI co-founder and co-CEO Priscilla Chan. “To change that, researchers and engineers at the New York Biohub will bioengineer immune cells to scout, report, and repair damage to our cells before it leads to serious illnesses.”

“The grand scientific question that these scientists are going to go after is around cellular engineering—to engineer immune cells to detect specific diseases and then eventually encode their molecular makeup,” said CZI co-founder and co-CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The ultimate goal is to not go after a specific disease; it’s to create a new tool or platform that all scientists can use to study and make more specific advances.”

Lab tests and imaging scans can help doctors make some early diagnoses, but developing tools that can detect abnormalities before diseases take hold presents an opportunity that offers the potential to dramatically improve medical care. Immune cells are ideally suited to meet this challenge, as they are the only cells in our body that come in contact with virtually all of our tissues. They constantly roam the body by way of the blood and lymphatic system, helping monitor and maintain the health of our organs. CZ Biohub NY aims to unlock the vast information stored in the “molecular memory” of immune cells using single-cell biology tools, cutting-edge experimental technologies, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with the goal of bioengineering new functions into immune cells to continuously monitor and manage organ and tissue health.

While cancer immunotherapies—treatments in which immune cells are engineered to specifically attack tumors—have seen great success and become mainstream therapies for certain forms of cancer, considerably less scientific attention has been paid to the medical potential of the sensing and “molecular recording” capabilities inherent to immune cells that come in contact with diseased cells. CZ Biohub NY will work to refine and amplify this ability to detect and decode subtle signs of early-stage disease that can elude conventional testing then deliver treatment directly upon detection.

“The CZ Biohub Network is driving a new model of long-term, strategic collaborative science that will enable its scientists to address scientific challenges,” says Dr. Califano. “These will range from bioengineering immune cells to take residence in specific organs, reporting back on tissue- and organ-specific health status, and eventually delivering therapeutic molecules to stop diseases at their earliest stages. Joining the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network presents a unique opportunity and long-term runway to assemble a remarkable ‘dream team’ of scientists and technologists to pursue their most ambitious goals aimed at creating a healthier future for all of us. When we first thought of this idea, it sounded like science fiction. But then we realized that piece by piece, the scientists at this remarkable trio of research institutions had all the individual components that could make this star shot work. The CZ Biohub Network provides a unique opportunity and the means to realize these scientific aims over the next 10 to 15 years.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges, from eradicating disease and improving education to addressing the needs of local communities. The mission of the initiative is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.