‘We need new tools’: Chan Zuckerberg biotech research hub opens in Fulton Market, studying inflammation on a cellular level

Thursday morning in a gleaming laboratory in Fulton Market, Gov. J.B. Pritzker passed a microscope slide back and forth with Dr. Priscilla Chan. The pair stood out in dark business clothes among a cluster of lab coats, standing wide-eyed through a demonstration of how cells interact in the top few layers of human skin.

Chan, the wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, was on-site to celebrate the launch of the Chan Zuckerberg Chicago Biohub, a sprawling research space dedicated to studying inflammation on a cellular level.

With a 10- to 15-year timeline for new projects, Chan and Zuckerberg are leaning toward lofty goals for the future of the CZI’s second research hub. The foundation contributed $250 million to the hub, which has hired 50 employees locally so far.

Prior research into health issues involving inflammation has focused on the end stages of disease, Zuckerberg said in a video presented at Thursday’s launch. The biohub will shift to studying the causes of inflammatory disease.

Studying causes of inflammation could have implications for cancer, heart disease and autoimmune diseases, Pritzker said at Thursday’s launch.

Sensors small enough to examine skin at the molecular level don’t exist yet, Zuckerberg said by video — which is where the hub comes in.

Chan said Thursday that the hub, which brings together scientists and engineers from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “will help scientists end disease as we know it.”

“To understand the code that keeps our bodies healthy, and understand the errors that cause disease, we need new tools,” Chan said.

Fulton Labs, the 16-story research multiplex playing host to the biohub, is something of a miniature life sciences district in itself. The two-building campus also leases space to Charles River Laboratories and Portal Innovations.

CZI announced the launch of the Chicago space in March, and construction began on the 16th floor of Fulton Labs in August. Until construction on the 30,000-square-foot space finishes in January 2024, cell research continues on the nineth floor.

The space will house a clean room, which limits the size and amount of microparticles in the air around experiments. It will also include four rooms dedicated to growing synthetic skin, cardiac skin, tumors and neurons for study, operations manager Juhi Naik said.

The first CZ Biohub opened in San Francisco in 2016 and focused on cell mapping. Research projects have included OpenCell, a searchable map of more than a thousand proteins found in the cell, as well as atlases of all the cells found in flies, mice, lemurs and humans.

When Chan and Zuckerberg decided to create a larger network of hubs, they opened applications for a second host city — with the caveat that at least two research institutions nearby had to apply together.

Researchers at Northwestern, UChicago and UIUC came together to beat out 58 other applications, in a yearlong search process representing 172 institutions across 36 states. The trio of research universities already have a strong history of collaboration, which worked in their favor, said Stephen Quake, head of science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Chan described Illinois as an “incredible” contributor to recent scientific innovation, citing recent ALS research at Northwestern studying how cells degenerate.

State and local support for the hub also played a role in Chicago’s selection, Chan said. Pritzker has committed $25 million in state capital funding, though actual research will be funded directly by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The other winning factor: Dr. Shana Kelley, who was tapped as CZ Biohub Chicago president. Kelley, who joined Northwestern as a chemistry and biomedical engineering professor in 2021, has spent decades working in biotechnology and is credited on more than 50 patents.

“She works lightning fast,” Chan said of Kelley.

Half of human deaths annually can be attributed at least in part to inflammation, Kelley said. These fatal conditions include stroke and neurodegenerative disease.

Kelley hopes her team’s research will yield tools to generate precise 3D images of how cells communicate with each other.

“We really don’t know what causes inflammation to shift into overdrive,” Kelley said. “We have to get at that if we want to prevent human disease.”

Kelley said the team hopes to “put Chicago on the map in biomedicine.” Pritzker disagreed, saying the local biotech sphere has already been growing.

The governor hopes to be known for a “legacy of innovation,” citing investment in quantum engineering and financial incentives for experimental labs.

The biohub “is a prime example of the growing nexus of partnerships …” Pritzker said, “ ... that are funding the next generation of economic vitality for communities across the state.”