The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is an international collaborative consortium which is creating 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.
Charting all the cell types in the healthy body, the HCA will transform our understanding of the 37 trillion cells in the human body and is likely to revolutionise the way illnesses are diagnosed and treated. It is only possible now thanks to global collaboration, technological and computational breakthroughs, and science at great scale.
An open global initiative, the HCA was founded in 2016 and has grown to more than 3,000 HCA members from nearly 100 countries around the world, with a commitment to open data, equitable partnerships, and creating resources to benefit people worldwide.