Today, accompanied by Priscilla Chan, his wife and co-pilot on the God plane, Mark announced a $US3 ($4) billion plan to cure disease. Zuckerberg and Chan have a new lofty goal: to cure, manage or eradicate all disease by the end of this century.
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The new program, called Chan Zuckerberg Science (CZS), is part of the CZI that will bring together teams of scientists and engineers to build new tools for medical research.
The Biohub will be led by University of California, San Francisco professor Joseph DeRisi and Stanford University professor Stephen Quake, whose work includes small molecule screening and biological measurements. Bargmann, the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor at The Rockefeller University in NY, is a neurologist who helped lead President Barack Obama’s BRAIN Initiative to map brain activity and cure brain-related disorders.
Chan said she and Zuckerberg spent two years talking to scientists. But it does mean that our children and their children should get sick a lot less. At the time, they pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stock fb , then valued at about $45 billion, over their lifetimes. The facility will bring together engineers, computer scientists, researchers, scientists and others who will collaborate on new research efforts.
“The telescope helped us understand astronomy and the universe, the microscope helped us understand cells and bacteria to help us develop treatments for infectious diseases, while DNA sequencing and editing helps us fight cancer and genetic disorders”.
Zuckerberg and Chan will administer the funds through their philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Zuckerberg said that the existing scientific grant progress, which typically awards a few hundred thousand dollars to individuals, is inefficient at creating large breakthroughs. “I’ve been with families where we’ve hit the limit of what’s possible through medicine and science”, Chan said. Chan Zuckerberg Science will seek to eliminate those moments. Zuckerberg, made it clear that it is a long term process and may take more than a decade to be able to see visible results.
Its first effort will be creating a cell atlas of the human body. As Gates said: “We desperately need this science”.
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“It’s going to be years before the first tools get built, and years after that before they actually get used to cure diseases”, he said.
