Scale Biosciences (Scale Bio), a leader in innovative and scalable single cell analysis solutions, today announced the launch of the “100 Million Cell Challenge,” a global initiative aimed at pushing the boundaries of single-cell genomics research.
This first-of-its-kind program calls on researchers worldwide to submit proposals for large-scale single cell projects, with the goal of collectively analyzing 100 million cells or more across diverse biological systems and research areas. Selected projects will benefit from early access of Scale Bio’s newest workflow, QuantumScale, a single cell RNA sequencing technology capable of processing up to 2 million cells per run with unparalleled efficiency, data quality, and low cost per cell.
“The 100 Million Cell Challenge represents a pivotal moment in single cell genomics research,” said Giovanna Prout, President and CEO of Scale Bio. “By bringing together researchers from various disciplines and providing them with advanced technology from Scale Bio and our collaborators, we aim to catalyze new discoveries that will shape the future of precision medicine, further our understanding of complex biological systems, and fuel the explosion of generative AI that is being leveraged in biology.”
“By bringing together researchers from various disciplines and providing them with advanced technology from Scale Bio and our collaborators, we aim to catalyze new discoveries that will shape the future of precision medicine, further our understanding of complex biological systems, and fuel the explosion of generative AI that is being leveraged in biology.”
Key features of the Challenge include:
- Minimum project size of one million cells, with no maximum limit
- Collaboration with industry-leading partners for sequencing and data analysis services
- Substantially subsidized costs for library preparation and sequencing services
Scale Bio is proud to collaborate with Ultima Genomics for accurate, low-cost, and high-throughput sequencing, and NVIDIA for its accelerated computing platform. These collaborations will help ensure that participating researchers have access to state-of-the-art resources throughout the entire workflow.
We're excited to support the ‘100 Million Cell Challenge’ with our sequencing technology. The magnitude of this initiative aligns perfectly with our mission to enable researchers to generate and access genomic information at scale."
Gilad Almogy, CEO, Ultima Genomics
“Effectively training foundation models requires an immense amount of data. The dramatic increase in high-resolution single cell experiments from this project will help significantly impact translational research,” said George Vacek, Global Head of Genomics Alliances at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA GPU-powered analysis, researchers can rapidly gain meaningful insights from data, accelerating scientific discovery.”
Dr. Ronan Chaligne, Director, Single Cell Innovation Lab at MSK Cancer Center, emphasized the importance of increased scale in single cell studies: “The ability to analyze millions of cells in a single experiment is a game-changer. It will allow us to detect rare cell populations, understand cellular heterogeneity at an unprecedented level, and potentially uncover entirely new biological phenomena. This Challenge will accelerate our understanding of complex diseases and lead to novel therapeutic approaches.”
Researchers interested in participating can submit their project proposals from August 8 to October 15, 2024. Projects will be evaluated on a rolling basis as soon as they are submitted. Selected projects will be announced at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting in November 2024.
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