The Bio Report Transforming Drug Discovery and Disease Research—One Cell at a Time
Oct 8, 2025
In this enlightening discussion, Hani Goodarzi, a core investigator at the ARC Institute, shares insights on the Virtual Cell Atlas, a groundbreaking initiative that aggregates single-cell data. Joining him are Gilad Almogy, CEO of Ultima Genomics, who highlights their cost-effective sequencing technology, and Serge Saxonov, CEO of 10x Genomics, explaining how scalable sequencing enables extensive data generation. Together, they explore how this innovative platform aims to revolutionize drug discovery, offering models that predict cellular responses and enhance understanding of disease mechanisms.
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Link Perturbations To Single-Cell Readouts
- Use droplet barcoding (Chromium, GemExFlex) to process millions of cells while preserving single-cell resolution.
- Combine guide barcodes with transcriptomes to link perturbations to measured cellular responses.
Economics Enable Massive Experiments
- Ultra-high throughput, low-cost sequencing is required to make large perturbational single-cell experiments economically viable.
- Ultima focuses on scaling readout to support experiments in the hundreds of millions of cells.
Open Data And Models Accelerate Progress
- Release both harmonized datasets and trained models openly to accelerate community progress.
- Publish training code, evaluation metrics, and host challenges so others can benchmark and improve models.