UI to co-lead Zuckerberg-backed biomedical research hub

Mar. 3—CHICAGO — The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been selected to co-lead a multimillion-dollar hub for cutting-edge biomedical research, backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Alongside researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, UI faculty at the upcoming Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago will work to develop advanced tools, including tiny, embedded sensors and probes, to understand human tissue at a cellular level.

The biohub will get $250 million, along with another $25 million in capital funds from the state of Illinois, to study the topic over the next 10 years.

For diseases such as cancer and diabetes, we take measurements of several biomarkers in blood and tissue to assess the conditions, said Susan Martinis, UI vice chancellor for research and innovation.

"We're thinking about measuring hundreds or even thousands of these markers," Martinis explained. "Where do you get to that tipping point of disease versus wellness? That's one thing, because we really don't have that insight."

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI for short, is a philanthropic organization founded in 2015 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The couple pledged to commit 99 percent of their Facebook equity wealth to the LLC over their lifetimes.

In 2016, they founded the first CZ Biohub in San Francisco, which zeroed in on strategies to identify and respond to infectious diseases.

In 2021, they promised another $3.4 billion toward science philanthropy, with the ambitious goal of eradicating all disease by the end of the 21st century.

For the new biohub in Chicago, 58 collaborative proposals from teams of U.S. universities were sent in. After a yearlong selection process — which narrowed down to eight semifinalists and three finalists — the Northwestern-UChicago-UIUC joint application came out on top.

Martinis credited the engineering focus of the proposal — "Mark Zuckerberg, at the heart of him is an engineer," she said — and the three schools' history of collaboration.

"It was an exhilarating and intense and very fun process, we brought so many minds together," Martinis said.

Northwestern's Shana O. Kelley, professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry, will serve as president of the Chicago biohub. She has worked extensively with sensors, cofounding four companies using tech from her research.

Several UI faculty will play major roles, including Joon Kong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering; and Martha Gillette, alumni professor of cell and developmental biology and director of the neuroscience program.

"This can-do approach, to understand how healthy tissue stays healthy and what goes wrong when it doesn't, that's not a question most people ask," Gillette said. "This research has a tremendous opportunity to affect us all, and improve quality of life."

One major focus of the CZ Biohub Chicago's efforts will be studying inflammation, or how the body responds to infection, injury and some chronic diseases. Researchers plan to do this by engineering and deploying sensors to learn how cells work together.

Gillette is particularly interested in the inflammatory side of neurons, and how they interact with the muscular system.

"Inflammation is why we all go bad over time, it's the wear and tear of life," Gillette said.

If these mechanisms can be understood more thoroughly, perhaps they can be prevented. "What if a 90-year-old could walk like she could when she was 19?" was one of the questions Gillette posed in the group's final proposal, she said.

The UI's Carl Woese Institute for Genomic Biology will serve as a "satellite" location for the Chicago Biohub. A variety of scientific institutions on campus, including National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Beckman Institute and the Cancer Center, will contribute to research activities.

The Chicago Biohub leader Kelley will visit these centers in a campus visit early next month, as the new institution begins hiring researchers and ordering state-of-the-art equipment.

The location of the CZ Biohub Chicago is yet to be determined, though it'll likely be in a central location of the city, Martinis said. Researchers from all three institutions who join the project will work in and out of the facility once it's built.

"We picture it'll be a natural magnet not only for researchers in our campus to do their work and operate in a big think-tank, but researchers from around the world," Martinis said.