Associated organisationsBabraham Institute · Newcastle University · The Francis Crick Institute · University College London · University of Cambridge · University of Dundee · University of Oxford · Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial ResearchEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£10.0M
PeriodApr 2019 — Sept 2024
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A national network of researchers is systematically mapping how a single fertilised human egg becomes a fully formed baby, cell by cell. This matters because most of what scientists know about human development comes from animal studies or lab-grown cell clusters. The actual sequence of events inside human embryos and foetuses remains largely uncharted. Without this baseline, it is difficult to understand why development sometimes goes wrong, leading to miscarriage or congenital conditions. The project also fills a practical gap: many labs lack the specialised techniques to work with donated human embryonic and foetal tissues. If successful, the initiative will produce a public reference map of human cell lineages—essentially a family tree for every cell type in the body. This map will help doctors interpret genetic variants found in children with developmental disorders, and give researchers a standard against which to check whether lab-grown organoids or stem-cell therapies truly mimic real human tissue. The project is primarily fundamental science, building foundational knowledge. But similar lineage-mapping efforts in model organisms have underpinned breakthroughs in regenerative medicine and cancer biology, suggesting that a human atlas could eventually do the same.
View original technical description
The goal of the Human Developmental Biology Initiative (HDBI) is to be an enabling initiative to support wider research in human development. The UK is well positioned to take a lead in this, given its expertise in model organism developmental biology, the successful operation of the Human Developmental Biology Resource (HDBR) and clear regulation of human embryo research. HDBI will develop a set of core experimental and computational methods for studies in embryonic and foetal tissues. It will do so by focusing on generating foundational data on cell lineage in human development. To promote wider access to human developmental biology research techniques, HDBI will work closely with HDBR to develop the required technologies, creating two research hubs in proximity to the HDBR sites in London and Newcastle. Understanding developmental cell lineage provides an essential basis for comparative studies of development between species, as well as a context for understanding the developmental origins of disease. In addition to technology development, HDBI data will complement insights from Wellcome’s Deciphering Developmental Disorders program, the Human Cell Atlas and the MRC Regenerative Medicine Platform, and provide baseline data for validation of in vitro differentiated human tissue models.
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