HCA News

HCA Integrated Retina Atlas

The HCA Eye Biological Network has created a comprehensive integrated reference cell atlas of the human retina.

23 Apr 2025

HCA Hub Membership Portal and HCA website update

We are excited to announce a new platform called the HCA Hub, to help HCA members connect, chat and collaborate.

16 Apr 2025

The Human Cell Atlas collaborates with UNESCO to advance open science

A new collaboration between the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) and UNESCO will help increase global capacity and ethical frameworks to deliver the benefits of genomics at a global scale.

26 Mar 2025

Human Cell Atlas achieves leap in understanding of the human body

International consortium reports major progress toward goal of mapping all human cells.

20 Nov 2024

HCA Asia Workshop, Thailand, 24-28 June 2024

The 2024 HCA Asia Single-Cell Omics Workshop will be held in-person at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, on 24-28 June 2024.

20 Mar 2024

New HCA Data Portal

The HCA Data Portal has been redesigned and is now live online.

16 Nov 2023

HCA Latin America Workshop, Chile

The 2023 HCA Latin America in-person Computational and Experimental Design Workshop was held at the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, on 23-27 October.

30 Oct 2023

BICCN publishes detailed cellular maps of human brain

The largest atlas of human brain cells to date reveals more than 3,000 different cell types.

13 Oct 2023

Spotlight on HCA Members - Patricia Severino

In the fourth in a series of Spotlight interviews with HCA members around the world, we hear from Patricia Severino who is based in Brazil.

27 Sep 2023

Spotlight on HCA Members - Partha Majumder

In the third in a series of interviews with HCA members around the world, we hear from Partha Majumder who is the host for the 2023 HCA Asia Meeting in Kolkata, India.

24 Aug 2023

HCA Asia Meeting, 27-28 November 2023, Kolkata

The 2023 Human Cell Atlas Asia Meeting will be held on 27-28 November, in Kolkata, India, and will also be livestreamed.

21 Jul 2023

Spotlight on HCA Members - Gary Bader

In the second in a series of interviews with HCA members around the world, we hear from Gary Bader who is the host for the 2023 HCA General Meeting in Toronto in July.

14 Jun 2023

Single-Cell Atlas of the Whole Human Lung

First integrated Human Lung Cell Atlas provides insights into lung diseases

08 Jun 2023

Spotlight on HCA Members - Muzlifah Haniffa

In the first in a series of interviews with HCA members from around the world, we hear from Muzlifah Haniffa, who is based in the UK.

17 May 2023

2023 HCA General Meeting, 10-12 July, Toronto

The 2023 Human Cell Atlas General Meeting will be held on 10-12 July, 2023, in Toronto, Canada, at the MaRS Centre, and will also be livestreamed.

12 Apr 2023

HCA Africa Training Workshop, Ghana, 7-10 March, 2023

HCA Africa hosted the four-day in-person Computational and Experimental Design Workshop in Accra, Ghana, 7-10 March, 2023.

16 Mar 2023

New members of the HCA Organising Committee

The HCA Organising Committee (OC), the multinational governing body of the HCA, is delighted to announce six new members of the Committee.

16 Feb 2023

Scholars at Risk

The Human Cell Atlas consortium is now an Affiliate Member of Scholars at Risk.

27 Oct 2022

HCA Africa Computational Workshops (Virtual)

HCA is hosting virtual workshops to introduce Single-Cell RNA-Seq Analysis tools and techniques to researchers based in Africa, thanks to support by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

21 Oct 2022

HCA Developmental And Pediatric Cell Atlas Meeting, 20 - 22 November, 2022 (Hybrid)

The second HCA Developmental and Pediatric Cell Atlas Meeting will take place on 20 – 22 November, in Paris, France and online.

17 Oct 2022

HCA Asia Meeting, Bangkok, 3 - 4 November, 2022 (Hybrid)

The hybrid HCA Asia Meeting 2022 will be held on 3 - 4 November, in-person in Bangkok, Thailand, and virtually.

14 Oct 2022

HCA Latin America Symposium, 2022

The second Human Cell Atlas Latin America Symposium was held virtually on 6-7 October 2022.

11 Oct 2022

HCA General Meeting, June 27-29, 2022

The HCA 2022 General Meeting was held as a hybrid meeting in Vienna Austria and virtually, on June 27 - 29th 2022.

18 Aug 2022

Multi-tissue cell atlases lead to leap of understanding of immunity and disease

Milestone step towards the Human Cell Atlas goal of mapping every human cell type.

12 May 2022

Human Cell Atlas Africa 2022 Symposium, 21-22 March 2022

The first HCA Africa Symposium will be held virtually on 21st–22nd March 2022, with talks and discussions 11am-4.30pm GMT each day.

03 Feb 2022

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Announces Support for New Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced $28 million in grants for new Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas, supporting the inclusion of data from tissue samples from ancestrally diverse donors.

16 Nov 2021

Human Cell Atlas Asia Meeting, November 15-16th, 2021

The fifth Human Cell Atlas Asia Meeting will take place virtually on November 15–16th, 2021.

08 Oct 2021

Development Study Reveals Origins of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Creating Cell Atlas of Human Development will transform understanding of health and disease.

08 Sep 2021

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Announces Support for 17 New Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced $33 million in grants to support 17 collaborative groups of researchers and pediatricians to contribute healthy pediatric single-cell reference data to the HCA, to better understand, prevent, and treat childhood diseases.

27 Aug 2021

HCA Developmental and Pediatric Cell Atlas meeting, August 25-27th, 2021.

The first HCA Developmental and Pediatric Cell Atlas meeting will take place virtually on August 25-27th, 2021.

11 Aug 2021

HCA Latin America Workshop 2021 (Virtual)

The HCA Latin America Network is gaining momentum after the second HCA Latin America event, a two-week workshop from 26 April to 7 May, 2021.

25 May 2021

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to fund new Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas

Funding has been announced by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) for new Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas. Their Request for Applications (RFA) is focused on supporting collaborative teams of researchers to contribute data from tissue samples from ancestrally diverse donors to the HCA.

09 Mar 2021

Save The Date, HCA General Meeting, June 28 - 30, 2021

The next Human Cell Atlas General Meeting will take place virtually, on June 28 - 30th, 2021.

25 Feb 2021

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to fund new Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced funding for new Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas. Their Request for Applications (RFA) will support collaborative teams of researchers to contribute healthy, single-cell reference data from pediatric tissue samples to the HCA.

19 Jan 2021

BRAIN initiative Cell Census Network RFA from NIH

The NIH have increased the funding and anticipated number of awards available for RFA-MH-21-140, "BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) Scalable Technologies and Tools for Brain Cell Census.

17 Jan 2021

The Human Cell Atlas supports Black Lives Matter and global Ethnic Equity

We, the Organizing Committee and Equity Working Group of the Human Cell Atlas initiative, express our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

10 Jun 2020

Human Cell Atlas Development Lung Virtual Seminar, 17 June 2020

A virtual seminar on integrating single-cell genomics with developmental biology research

05 Jun 2020

HCA co-founder Aviv Regev to lead Genentech Research and Early Development

Roche today announced that Human Cell Atlas (HCA) founding co-chair Aviv Regev will become the Executive Vice President for Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED) as of 1 August 2020. She will continue to serve as co-chair of the HCA Organizing Committee with Sarah Teichmann, also an HCA co-founder.

11 May 2020

CZI to fund five single-cell projects studying COVID-19 disease progression

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced $750,000 in funding to support five projects studying how COVID-19 progresses in patients at the level of individual cells and tissues. This will help support the HCA-COVID-19 effort.

08 May 2020

Human Cell Atlas – LifeTime COVID-19 Joint Registry

HCA and LifeTime are joining efforts in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by setting up a joint registry.

04 May 2020

NIH-HCA 2020 Joint Meeting - Recordings

Videos of the recent NIH-HCA virtual joint meeting are now available on our YouTube channel.

28 Apr 2020

COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium

The White House announced the launch of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium to provide COVID-19 researchers worldwide with access to the world’s most powerful high performance computing resources that can significantly advance the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus.

02 Apr 2020

Human Cell Atlas Development and Pediatric Cell Atlas Meeting 6-8 July 2020. Postponed

Unfortunately, due to the substantial uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Development and Pediatric Cell Atlas Program Committee has decided to postpone the meeting to a later date.

30 Mar 2020

NIH-HCA Joint Meeting, 30 – 31 March 2020

The virtual NIH-HCA Joint Meeting is taking place today. Tag yourself participating in the virtual meeting #NIHHCA2020

30 Mar 2020

NIH-HCA Joint Meeting, 30 – 31 March 2020 (Virtual)

Due to the evolving situation and associated travel restrictions related to the global spread of COVID-19, we have decided to convert the NIH-HCA 2020 Joint Meeting from a face-to-face meeting to a virtual 2-day meeting to take place on March 30-31, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT.

06 Mar 2020

Human Cell Atlas Asia Meeting 2019 ~ Recordings now available

The Asia meeting recordings from 10-11 November 2019, Singapore are now available online.

15 Feb 2020

HCA Development and Pediatric Atlas Meeting and Single-Cell Genomics Public Symposium, July 6-8, 2020, Toronto

Register your interest to attend this event, which will take place July 6 - 8, 2020, at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Canada, hosted by Medicine by Design at the University of Toronto.

04 Feb 2020

NIH-HCA Joint Meeting, 30 March – 01 April 2020, Bethesda, USA

We are currently oversubscribed for in-person attendance, and therefore, cannot register additional people at this time. However, we encourage our community members to join us for the live broadcast, which will be posted to the meeting website in the coming weeks.

29 Jan 2020

HCA Equity Meeting recordings - now available

The Equity meeting recordings from 31 October in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia are available on our YouTube channel.

12 Dec 2019

Helmsley Trust Announces $13m funding towards creating a Gut Cell Atlas

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announced $13 million in new grants to create a Gut Cell Atlas, cataloguing the many cell types in the small and large intestines.

27 Oct 2019

Human Cell Atlas Asia Meeting 2019 ~ 10-11 November 2019, Singapore

This year, the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) is delighted to organise the third annual HCA Asia Meeting, which takes place from 10 11 November 2019 at Matrix, Biopolis, Singapore.

18 Sep 2019

HCA Eighth General Meeting, 10-11 October 2019, Spain - further information

The meeting’s theme is “Building the Human Cell Atlas Roadmap.” We will explore how to build out draft roadmaps for the various organ atlases in plenary and breakout sessions. We will also include interactive demos of HCA datasets in action and have a technical focus on spatial genomics.

14 Sep 2019

HCA Equity Meeting, 31 October 2019, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The meeting’s goal is to help introduce the HCA, and the transformative opportunities it may afford, to the global health community, as well as to consider fundamental compositional, organizational, and educational goals for the HCA.

11 Sep 2019

HCA Eighth General Meeting, 10-11 October 2019, Spain

The 8th Human Cell Atlas Meeting will take place on October 10 - 11, 2019 at CosmoCaixa, in Barcelona, Spain.

14 Aug 2019

Call for Travel Scholarships for HCA DCP Data Contributors to the HCA Meeting in Spain, October 10 & 11, 2019

We are delighted to announce travel scholarships for HCA Data contributors for the upcoming October 10 & 11, 2019, Human Cell Atlas Meeting to be held in Barcelona, Spain.

07 Aug 2019

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awards $68 million to support the growth of the Human Cell Atlas

New grants support networks of scientists from diverse disciplines who study a variety of healthy human organs

21 Jun 2019

HCA Seventh General Meeting, 23-24 May 2019, Tokyo

Hosted by the RIKEN Institute and kindly supported by The Kavli Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

16 May 2019

Human Cell Atlas funding boost from the Medical Research Council

The MRC has announced that it is investing £6.7 million to support the UK’s contribution to the Human Cell Atlas initiative.

11 Dec 2018

HCA General Meeting, Cambridge, MA, November 1-2, 2018

Hosted by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard with support from The Kavli Foundation.

10 Oct 2018

Human Cell Atlas statement on travel restrictions

The Human Cell Atlas is a global, open, and collaborative scientific community committed to the principles of diversity, inclusion, and equity. To date, more than 1,000 researchers from 584 institutes in 55 countries have registered to be part of our effort.

09 Oct 2018

MRC - up £5m available to support the Human Cell Atlas Initiative

The Medical Research Council has launched a £5.5m funding opportunity for UK-based researchers to contribute to the Human Cell Atlas through single-cell gene expression analysis and imaging. The competition is open to groups with access to healthy human tissue, and there is an opportunity to receive additional embryonic and foetal tissue for comparative analysis.

24 Sep 2018

New Funding Opportunity: Gut Cell Atlas

The Helmsley Charitable Trust's Crohn's Disease Program is excited to announce a new funding opportunity.

23 Sep 2018

Seed Networks (CZI)

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and the Helmsley Charitable Trust (Helmsley) are pleased to announce continued support for the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) by collaborating on two new funding mechanisms that will continue the work of the HCA community both accessed through this single application portal.

23 Sep 2018

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: Imaging Scientists

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invites applications for five-year grants to support Imaging Scientists employed in imaging centers at non-profit universities or university-affiliated research institutes within the United States.

06 Sep 2018

The Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) are Partnering to Support the Continued Development of the Human Cell Atlas

COMING SOON: A COLLABORATIVE REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS (RFA). Full RFA and application instructions for 3-year projects will be posted in early September and a common application portal will be open September 18 – November 13, 2018.

21 Aug 2018

New partnership will support Human Cell Atlas development

The Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) are partnering to support the continued development of the Human Cell Atlas

21 Aug 2018

Human Cell Atlas gets a boost with first funding from Wellcome

First funding from Wellcome

09 Aug 2018

EC H2020 Call [SC1-BHC-31-2019: Pilot Actions to Build the Foundations of a Human Cell Atlas]

Following the recent EC H2020 call [SC1-BHC-31-2019: Pilot actions to build the foundations of a human cell atlas], the International Human Cell Atlas Consortium would like to offer to assist with match-making consortium members.

08 Aug 2018

Data Coordination Platform makes available first data sets

Genetic profiles of human and mouse cells have now been posted on the Human Cell Atlas online portal.

19 Apr 2018

85 New HCA Projects Funded by Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative

Genetic profiles of human and mouse cells have now been posted on the Human Cell Atlas online portal.

18 Apr 2018

Human Cell Atlas takes first steps towards understanding early human development

First 250 thousand developmental cells sequenced.

18 Mar 2018

The international Human Cell Atlas publishes strategic blueprint

Announces data from first one million cells.

18 Oct 2017

The Human Cell Atlas White Paper

In October 2016, the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) initiative launched its planning process. The following year was spent by the HCA community laying out the best way to build such an Atlas while ensuring high-quality, open-access data and global equity. This initial planning phase of meetings, discussions, and early pilot projects has now culminated in the release of the Human Cell Atlas white paper.

18 Oct 2017