An Organization’s Claim to End All Disease by 2100
Aiden Salk | January 16th, 2024
In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife–Dr. Priscilla Chan–co-founded the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Recently, the duo stated that they want to cure all diseases by the end of the century. Though this objective may seem impossible, the CZI has outlined some of its short and long-term goals to make this dream a reality.
How will the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s goal be achieved?
On a podcast with Andrew-Huberman, Chan and Zuckerberg state that they themselves do not believe that they will be the ones to eradicate all diseases. Instead, they have been working on developing new technology that uses large-language models to analyze enormous pools of data.
Zuckerberg shares how he hopes scientists, physicians, and engineers can then use the newly developed technology to learn from the data in novel ways. He mentions an anecdote about how the microscope, the vaccine, and the telescope did not all provide immediate answers to various issues and questions; rather, these technologies led to a cascade of new discoveries by allowing for researchers to use them in their studies.
One short-term goal of the CZI is to understand all cells in the body. Ultimately, the CZI strives to develop a digital model of the cell that can be used to observe and assess the characteristics of healthy and diseased cells. By training artificial intelligence (AI) to understand healthy and diseased cells, the AI may be able to provide immediate feedback about how changes in the cell’s genome affect the phenotype of the human body. Scientists all over the world would be able to use this ever-growing digital cell model to gain a holistic understanding of a particular gene or mutation’s effect.
What’s different about the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative?
Two notable attributes of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s effort are its immense funding and its desire to bring researchers together from around the globe. In fact, according to the CZI’s website, they have awarded over $4.8 billion in grants to researchers since 2015. The CZI has brought in researchers from various institutions to collaborate with one another in biohubs in San Francisco, Chicago, and plans for New York City. Each biohub is partnered with various institutions in its respective state.
Furthermore, with the human eye alone, trends in data may not be discernible. Research is performed every day, and it can be very difficult to stay up to date with discoveries. AI may be the solution to help us draw new conclusions. One product introduced by the CZI was CELLxGENE. This is a version of the aforementioned digitized cell. In a YouTube video published by the CZI in 2022, a member of the CZI stated, “The hope with a tool like CELLxGENE is that the time it takes to come up with and address hypotheses becomes very short.”
Vanderbilt student’s reactions
One anonymous Vanderbilt undergraduate student shares their opinion on the CZI’s mission: “I believe that plausibly [curing all diseases by 2100] is completely unreasonable given that we have constant evolution of diseases… developing new pathogens all the time. I believe that it is a noble goal, but it is just not doable.” They go on to say that we should target more pressing issues such as cancer and HIV.
Another Vanderbilt undergraduate student, Eugene Min ‘26, shares his opinion: “It’d be pretty great if they did [achieve their goal]. It’s a pretty big promise to make… I think it is very limited as of now. Going forward [a digitized model of the cell] is a good idea to develop now, rather than later. But the biggest problem I see about doing experiments on that digitized model of the human body is directly limited by how much we know about the cell. The problem we have with most diseases is that we do not fully understand all of it. For some diseases… we know everything about it, and for others, we know some but not all. The AI would only know what we know, so there isn’t too much we can learn.”
Going forward
Whether you believe that Chan and Zuckerberg’s dream of ending all diseases by 2100 can come to fruition or not, it is undeniable that the CZI’s many efforts will at least bring us closer toward achieving their ambition. We certainly have much to learn in the coming years and a spark of hope to look forward to.
References
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (2023, November 13). https://chanzuckerberg.com/
Huberman Lab Podcast. Sponsors include AG1, Eight Sleep, LMNT, InsideTracker, Momentous. (2023). Mark Zuckerberg & Dr. Priscilla Chan: Curing All Human Diseases & the Future of Health & Technology. YouTube. Retrieved November 19, 2023, from https://youtu.be/1Wo6SqLNmLk?si=eLqnhYkixR-eK0Rp.
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco. CZ Biohub San Francisco. (2023, November 6). https://www.czbiohub.org/sf/
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago. CZ Biohub Chicago. (2023, November 15). https://www.czbiohub.org/chi/
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (2022, November 16). Mapping the road to health with cellxgene. YouTube. https://youtu.be/YyRyappiDgE?si=sFPFuJZxQFiys4Fv
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (n.d.). Cellxgene Data Portal. https://cellxgene.cziscience.com/
