New partnership with UNESCO supports the Human Cell Atlas Project
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A new partnership between the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will help advance open science and global capacity to deliver the benefits of genomics at a global scale.
Leaders from HCA and UNESCO will sign a letter of intent in Paris today (25 March), at the 2025 Multi-stakeholder High-level Conference on Science Diplomacy.
The partnership recognises the impact of HCA as a consortium of almost 4,000 researchers who are working to advance science whilst aligning with the gold standards of collaboration, inclusivity and ethics established by UNESCO.
HCA is an international collaborative consortium whose mission is to create comprehensive reference maps of all human cells, as a basis for understanding human health and for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease.1 Since its inception in 2016, HCA has advocated for open, ethical, equitable and representative science that benefits all communities worldwide.
HCA’s mission aligns with UNESCO’s mandate for advancing open science through international collaboration for peace and sustainable development. Both organisations recognise the need for joint and coordinated efforts between countries.
The UNESCO-HCA letter of intent signals three principle areas of cooperation:
- Upholding the principles of openness, inclusivity and ethical responsibility by continuing to strengthen ethical frameworks.
- Positioning HCA’s data resources in alignment with the principles and guidance of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
- Advancing opportunities to strengthen capacity and global participation in atlas building by promoting knowledge exchange, regional collaboration and training.
With both sides committed to working together on these three key priorities, the organisations will ensure that the medical and scientific advances made possible by HCA and other truly global scientific initiatives are shared equitably across the globe and provide health benefits to all of humanity.
“The letter of intent being signed is a huge step forward for the HCA in many ways. For example, the HCA already has structures in place to ensure our work is conducted with openness, inclusivity and ethical responsibility. The partnership with UNESCO will strengthen these principles and mechanisms.”
Professor Sarah Teichmann, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas, based at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute of the University of Cambridge
“Our wealth of data and our ethos of open science, dating back to the earliest days of the HCA, are two of our core strengths. With the HCA’s remarkable progress since our launch in 2016, we have created an enormous repository of data covering tens of millions of human cells and explorable atlases. To ensure that these data remain accessible to every researcher as a key biomedical resource, we look forward to working alongside UNESCO. Bringing these international initiatives together is an exciting and critical opportunity.”
Dr Aviv Regev, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas, based at Genentech
At today’s Conference on Science Diplomacy, HCA member Dr Geneviève Almouzni will participate in a roundtable discussion titled, “The role of Science Diplomacy in Promoting Openness while Ensuring Security in Scientific Research.”
“There are significant global disparities in scientific research, with certain regions not being equally represented either in terms of participating scientists or in the biological data that they collect and analyse. HCA was conceived as a global initiative to ensure that the Atlas represents the diversity of the world in the data collected and thus helps reduce disparities in medicine and public health for communities everywhere. By partnering with UNESCO, our mission to train researchers and support capacity building in underrepresented regions will be further reinforced.”
Dr Geneviève Almouzni, Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research based at the Institut Curie, Paris
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Notes
- The HCA is an international collaborative consortium whose mission is to create comprehensive reference maps of all human cells—the fundamental units of life—as a basis for understanding human health and for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease. The HCA community is producing high quality Atlases of tissues, organs and systems, to create a milestone Atlas of the human body. More than 3,500 HCA members from over 100 countries are working together to achieve a diverse and accessible Atlas to benefit humanity across the world. Discoveries are already informing medical applications from diagnoses to drug discovery, and the Human Cell Atlas will impact every aspect of biology and healthcare, ultimately leading to a new era of precision medicine. https://www.humancellatlas.org
