Recently Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg
and his wife Priscilla Chan earlier on Wednesday
pledged more than $3 billion to the plan to
“cure, prevent or manage all disease within our
children’s lifetime.”
Speaking through tears at a San Francisco
event to announce the initiative, Priscilla Chan said she
hoped to spare parents the pain she had seen and witnessed
while delivering difficult news as a pediatrician.
and his wife Priscilla Chan earlier on Wednesday
pledged more than $3 billion to the plan to
“cure, prevent or manage all disease within our
children’s lifetime.”
Speaking through tears at a San Francisco
event to announce the initiative, Priscilla Chan said she
hoped to spare parents the pain she had seen and witnessed
while delivering difficult news as a pediatrician.
"The plan includes creating a bioscience
research center, developing a chip to diagnose
diseases and ways to monitor the bloodstream
continuously."
She said this will better aid in understanding the human body and better ways to fight and control diseases thereby pushing forward the ability to alleviate suffering.
"We want to push back that
boundary,” she said.
The event was attended by both business and
political luminaries including the former Microsoft
Corp Chairman Bill Gates, San Francisco
Mayor Ed Lee and California Lieutenant
Governor Gavin Newsom among others.
political luminaries including the former Microsoft
Corp Chairman Bill Gates, San Francisco
Mayor Ed Lee and California Lieutenant
Governor Gavin Newsom among others.
Zuckerberg said health treatment with the aid of science and the medical
community have made rapid advancements
over the last 50 years, including totally eradicating
smallpox and nearly eliminating polio without
the aid of ultra modern technology.
In a post on his facebook fan page Zuckerberg said
“Today, just four kinds of diseases cause the
majority of deaths, cancer,
heart disease, infectious diseases and
neurological diseases. We can make progress
on all of them with the right technology.”
The main plan includes creating a bioscience
research center, called the Biohub, tasked with developing
a chip to diagnose diseases, and ways to
monitor the bloodstream continuously and map
cell types in the body.
Chan and Zuckerberg have revealed plans to donate $600 million
over the next decade to the Biohub in San
Francisco to make the dream come true, bringing together Bay-area
researchers and scientists from the University
of California at San Francisco, the University
of California at Berkeley and Stanford
University.
The Two initial Biohub projects will be a "Cell Atlas",
a map of cells controlling the body’s major
organs, and the Infectious Disease Initiative to
develop new tools, tests, vaccines and
strategies for fighting diseases such as HIV,
Ebola and the Zika virus.
The Biohub will be led by the University of
California, San Francisco professor Joseph
DeRisi and Stanford University professor
Stephen Quake, whose works includes small
molecule screening and biological
measurements.
Dr. Cori Bargmann, a Rockefeller University
neuroscientist, will take the lead in all of Chan
Zuckerberg’s science initiatives.
research center, called the Biohub, tasked with developing
a chip to diagnose diseases, and ways to
monitor the bloodstream continuously and map
cell types in the body.
Chan and Zuckerberg have revealed plans to donate $600 million
over the next decade to the Biohub in San
Francisco to make the dream come true, bringing together Bay-area
researchers and scientists from the University
of California at San Francisco, the University
of California at Berkeley and Stanford
University.
The Two initial Biohub projects will be a "Cell Atlas",
a map of cells controlling the body’s major
organs, and the Infectious Disease Initiative to
develop new tools, tests, vaccines and
strategies for fighting diseases such as HIV,
Ebola and the Zika virus.
The Biohub will be led by the University of
California, San Francisco professor Joseph
DeRisi and Stanford University professor
Stephen Quake, whose works includes small
molecule screening and biological
measurements.
Dr. Cori Bargmann, a Rockefeller University
neuroscientist, will take the lead in all of Chan
Zuckerberg’s science initiatives.
Any research, tools, drugs and material coming out of
Biohub, which will work with a network of 10
to 15 laboratories across the world, will be
“available to every scientist, everywhere,”
Bargmann believes that good results would soon start turning up from the project.
“If you take great people and set them loose
on important problems in an intelligent way and
give them a long time horizon there will be
progress.”
