“The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is already doing some very promising work in improving the education of all students”. “This is not something that we simply read about in a book and made a decision to do”, said Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, 32, said the initiative was to “make a better future for our children”. The lab will be lead by biochemist Joseph DeRisi, Professor and Chairman of the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as Stephen Quake, Lee Otterson Professor in at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and Professor of bioengineering of applied physics and physics. She was quick to note that the goal isn’t to eliminate disease entirely but to invest in research that will allow for today’s diseases to be cured, prevented and managed.
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Chan and Zuckerberg spent two years speaking to scientists, engineers and medical professionals, all of whom, the pair said, believe such goals are possible.
Zuckerberg spoke passionately, as did Chan, about how the country spends 50x more on treating sick people than it does curing diseases and providing preventative care so they don’t get sick in the first place.
The effort will be managed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to which Zuckerberg committed $45 billion of his personal fortune last fall.
The second is the Infectious Disease Initiative, which will try to develop new tests and vaccines to tackle HIV, Ebola, Zika and other new diseases, BBC reported.
Zuckerberg suggested that artificial intelligence could help with brain imaging to treat neurological diseases, machine learning could be used to analyse cancer genomes, while chips and blood monitors could identify diseases quickly.
“Throughout history, most scientific breakthroughs have been preceded by the invention of new tools to help us see problems in new ways – like the telescope, the microscope and DNA sequencing”. The couple in December 2015 had announced that they would give away 99% of their wealth to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation”. We’ll be investing more than $3 billion to achieve our collective vision. The Biohub will also fund Chan Zuckerberg Investigators to support high-impact projects that are too exploratory to receive government support.
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“It’s going to take years before the first tools are built, and years after that before the first diseases are treated”. So we have to be patient. At the heart of this undertaking, the initiative says, is the goal of creating a strategy that will “unlock understanding of the human body down to the cellular level”.
