An Extended Pilot for the Human Cell Atlas: Adult tissues, human development and inflammation-mediated pathologies

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is an international, collaborative effort that “…aims to define all human cell types in terms of their distinctive patterns of gene expression, physiological states, developmental trajectories, and location”. Here, we will contribute directly to the first phase of the HCA by forming an ‘extended pilot’ to implement UK infrastructure for large-scale, high quality human cell atlas experiments. We will generate a high-level atlas, with spatial resolution, for multiple adult human tissues along with matched data from human fetal material. We will then illustrate the power of a deep and focused investigation of a single tissue (skin) to produce highly-detailed data describing its cellular composition and spatial organisation. Finally, for selected tissues that have been profiled in adults and fetal material, we will analyse samples from immune-mediated disorders as a comparison with our reference data to gain deeper understanding of the pathological mechanisms. This will demonstrate the utility of the HCA as a ‘healthy reference’ for comparison with disease. Throughout, we will generate profound biological insight from primary human cells and lay a foundation of technology development and optimisation with a set of hardened and scalable methods for single-cell RNA-sequencing, spatially-resolved gene expression, and tissue imaging.