“To cure, prevent, and manage every human disease by the end of the century”—this is the bold vision of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).
Launched in 2015 by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, CZI aims to build a “better future for everyone” by addressing some of society’s most troubling challenges in healthcare, education, community development, and technology. CZI shows no signs of easing off the accelerator in their collective push to address these wide-ranging problems, launching multiple initiatives in recent years, including the Human Cell Atlas, CellxGene, and the Rare as One Project.
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network is one of these visionary endeavors, with CZ Biohub Chicago serving as one of the three exclusive research centers in the network.
Nince Cancer Center at Illinois members were appointed as the first cohort of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago investigators.
CZ Biohub Chicago’s unique grand challenge is to develop engineering-driven solutions for an unprecedented molecular understanding of inflammation that underly many diseases. Learning the secrets of inflammation progression, how to identify early warning signs, how to prevent and treat it, its interaction with the immune system—these are all key variables for the new CZ Biohub.
To begin addressing this grand biological challenge, the newly established CZ Biohub Chicago recently announced its first cohort of investigators, which includes 48 scientists and engineers from three partner institutions: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago.
The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) comprises nearly one fifth of this inaugural cohort. This robust CCIL representation includes nine CCIL members, who will receive funding for “high-risk, high-reward research” toward CZ Biohub Chicago’s mission.
Rohit Bhargava, CCIL Director, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering
Bumsoo Han, Professor of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Auinash Kalsotra, Professor of Biochemistry
HyunJoon Kong, Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Catherine Murphy, Interim Director of the Beckman Institute, Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair of Chemistry
Taher Saif, Professor of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Mei Shen, Professor of Chemistry
Shannon Sirk, Professor of Engineering
Jonathan Sweedler, James R. Eiszner Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry
CZ Biohub Chicago principal investigators Auinash Kalsotra, Taher Saif, and Jonathan Sweedler shared insights for the CCIL audience into this inspiring new research collaboration.
What is the significance of CZ Biohub Chicago?
“An overarching goal of CZI is to develop instrumented tissues, i.e., tissues that can be formed in vitro but embedded with advanced instruments that allow multiple biophysical and chemical measurements, as well as perturbations and interventions to study at high spatio-temporal resolution tissue response, injuries, damage, and homeostatic recovery, to name a few. One of the major focus areas is the study of immune response of tissues during inflammation. The tissues will be formed from human cells to mimic disease (cancer, stroke, inflammation) for individualized care including prognosis, drug dosage and testing. These studies are expected to minimize the burden of animal models,” said Saif.
“Advancing our understanding of cancer requires new ideas and new partnerships. The CZI Biohub brings a new research effort to the state, forges connections between three leading Illinois universities and enables exciting new research partnerships,” said Sweedler.
What does it mean to you as a cancer researcher and CCIL member to be included in the CZ Biohub Chicago initiative?
“I am incredibly excited to be part of the first cohort of CZ Biohub Chicago investigators. For the next three years, we will explore innovative ideas related to inflammation and the function of immune system in the liver”, said Kalsotra.
“This is a great opportunity as part of the CCIL. We have been developing micro fabricated instruments for hosting in vitro tumors to study the role of the tumor microenvironment on cancer progression. Our instruments measure various biophysical cues, such as tumor stiffness, contractility of stromal cells, motility, and invasion of cancer cells under various drugs. Our vision of instrumented cancer tumors align with CZI’s core goal of developing instrumented tissues for understanding human diseases in search for cures,” said Saif.
What will be your research contribution?
“My lab has been studying liver regeneration and repair under healthy and diseased conditions in animal models for many years, but probing inflammatory responses in diseased human livers is a completely new area of research for me. I will be collaborating with Yogesh Goyal at Northwestern University to address some major conceptual and technological gaps in our understanding of chronic inflammation and its potential connections to liver cancer. Together, we will develop new experimental and computational frameworks that enable multiscale cataloging and mapping of diseased cell states onto the functional outcomes for chronic inflammation in human livers and beyond,” said Kalsotra.
“As one of the CZI investigators and the PI of the project, “Cellular contractility and mechanotransduction in the neuroinflammatory response,” alongside co-PIs Qian Chen and Hyun Joon Kong, we will develop a novel instrumented neurovascular tissue platform with embedded force sensors, integrated with fluorescent microscopy and electron microscopy techniques, to study the biophysics of neuroinflammation at the tissue level with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution. These measurements will enable novel explorations of the mechanobiology of neuroinflammation which have never been considered before, and potentially help identify new therapeutic targets for neuroinflammation,” said Saif.
“Our new CZI Biohub project brings together the Kelleher group, a leading proteomics group from Northwestern, and my group’s single cell expertise to create new tools to study the molecular changes occurring in individual cells during the inflammatory process—information not currently available,” said Sweedler.
Editor’s note:
This story was written by Jonathan King, CCIL Communications Specialist.