How we’re supporting the Human Immunome Project

The immune system is the nexus of human health. This complex and dynamic system is essential in protecting us from disease, promoting healing, and maintaining overall well-being throughout our lives. Its dysregulation is believed to drive most human pathologies, including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

A hallmark of the human immune system is its extensive variability between individuals, over time and across disease states. But scientists' understanding of the extent, cause and consequence of this variability is still incomplete—in part because of limitations in the magnitude, scope and diversity of data available.

There is a critical need to address this data gap and to identify the biomarkers that can be turned into predictive tools for health trajectory, treatment response and other outcomes at the individual level. With the right data, artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computational approaches can be used to generate novel insights into the intricate connection between the immune system and health. 

The mission of the Human Immunome Project (HIP) is to address the data gap, building diverse immunological datasets at scale and creating publicly available AI models of the immune system to accelerate medical research and drug discovery, decrease healthcare costs and improve health for all. Now, Danaher and its operating companies, including Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, SCIEX and Abcam, will be support this mission as the Project's preferred provider of high-quality instruments, reagents and scientific expertise to enable in-depth characterization of the immune system. 

Products and workflow solutions from Danaher businesses will support: 

• Genomics to sequence genetic content of immune cells and identify variation within and between individuals and populations
• Transcriptomics to sequence RNA content of immune cells to measure and compare gene expression both in bulk and in single cells
• Proteomics to detect proteins in the serum and on the surface of immune cells, including the B- and T- cell receptors, which are important mediators in adaptive immune responses
• Immune Cell Phenotyping to identify and classify different types of immune cells and their variable abundances
• Metabolomics to identify the different small molecules present in the serum and blood, such as glucose and lactate levels
• Microbiome analysis to identify the composition of microorganisms, typically from the stool, to understand how the microbiome influences immune system development and function

The scope of the Human Immunome Project is massive, with a starting goal to collect extensive, high-resolution data from approximately 1,500 participants from diverse populations around the world over a five-year period. This first phase of the project is expected to generate more than 21 million AI-optimized datapoints that can be fed into algorithms to create disease-relevant models of the immune system.  To facilitate this collection, the Project is creating a standard Immune Monitoring Kit using technologies from Danaher businesses.

The models that emerge from this collaborative, AI-driven effort have the potential to reshape our understanding of the immune system and to help us identify new patterns that can inspire future therapeutic and diagnostic development.