Sanger Human Cell Atlasing Project
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Sanger Human Cell Atlasing Project. Defining human cells in terms of gene expression, physiological states, developmental trajectories, and location.
IRAS ID
260474
Contact name
Sarah Teichmann
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Wellcome Sanger Institute
Duration of Study in the UK
10 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research 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.\n\nPrevious 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.\n\nThe 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. \n\nSamples used (blood or tissue) will retrospective, with samples coming from established tissue banks from the UK and the rest of the world and ethically approved research studies where consent has been taken for use of the samples in future research. Donors will encompass both the living and the deceased, age 0 to 99+, and will be healthy and diseased individuals. Prospective sample collection may be added to the study at a later date via the substantial amendment process.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/YH/0441
Date of REC Opinion
19 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion