Ten years, tens of millions of cells.
The Human Cell Atlas consortium, launched in October 2016 by around 100 researchers led by Aviv Regev and Sarah Teichmann to map the body's roughly 30 trillion cells, has grown into one of the largest collaborative efforts in biology. By 2024 it had released four integrated v1 atlases, including a Human Lung Cell Atlas with over 2 million cells from 486 individuals across 49 datasets. Its next stage, cataloguing billions of cells, will draw on spatial biology and AI advances.