Sanger Human Cell Atlasing Project

• Conditions: Genetic Disease; Human Development

• Registration Number: NCT06497673
• Lead Sponsor: The Wellcome Sanger Institute

Brief Summary

"Cell Atlasing" refers to a novel strategy to characterise cells in tissues at the molecular level in a quantitative manner. The international Human Cell Atlas consortium brings together a community of biologists, clinicians, technologists, physicists, computational scientists, software engineers, and mathematicians to capitalise on drawing together leaders with various biological, technical and computational expertise. The project is based on the aim to define all human cell types in terms of their distinctive patterns of gene expression, physiological states, developmental trajectories, and location. This will pave the way to create a reference map of all human cells as a basis for understanding human health and diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease.

Detailed Description

Previous methods for quantifying molecular states of cells included microarray and standard RNA-seq analysis on a tissue section (RNA-seq is a technique to look at the activity of all the genes in a cell). These methods estimate the activity of any given gene by averaging the signal from millions of cells. Given the heterogeneity of cell populations (i.e.how uniform they are), measurement of the mean values of signals overlooks the internal interactions and differences within a cell population that may be crucial for maintaining normal tissue function and facilitating disease progression.

The Sanger Human Cell Atlasing project will adopt various genomic approaches that will provide genome-wide information in a single experiment. This project aims to scale up the single cell genomics and high-throughput highly multiplex spatial gene expression profiling approaches. Coupled with powerful computational methods, this strategy will produce a comprehensive and systematic reference map of human cells, providing a fundamental blueprint of cell states for both basic biological research and clinical practice.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2019-12-16
• Status Verified: 2024-07
• Study First Submitted: 2024-07-04
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-07-04
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-07-04
• Study First Posted: 2024-07-12
• Last Update Posted: 2024-07-12
• Primary Completion: 2029-11-07
• Study Completion: 2029-11-07

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 4000

Inclusion Criteria

• Samples are from the living and the deceased age 0 to 99+ from healthy and diseased individuals.
• All samples will have fully informed consent for use in research.

Exclusion Criteria

• Samples taken without consent for use in future research
• Samples taken from individuals without the capacity to consent to use in research

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
This project aims to scale up the single cell genomics and high-throughput highly multiplex spatial gene expression profiling approaches.	10 years	Coupled with powerful computational methods, this strategy will produce a comprehensive and systematic reference map of human cells, providing a fundamental blueprint of cell states for both basic biological research and clinical practice.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Wellcome Sanger Institute; 🇬🇧 Cambridge, United Kingdom