The body of a human adult is made up of trillions of cells invisible to the naked eye. Although modern science has uncovered much of the mystery surrounding how these cells interact, the truth is that much is still unknown to us.
A group of scientists decided to help us better understand the ways in which these cells connect, interact and organize themselves in the tissues and organs of our body by creating HuBMAP. A real "Google Maps of the body", a map of the human body that allows anyone to take a deep dive into our body, down to a cellular level.
The future map of the human body
“Our current methods of general mapping of the human body are limited,” he explains in a press release Jonathan Silverstein, professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “There is currently not enough data to address several diseases.”
Silverstein is part of an international group of medical scientists who are working to create the new interactive 3D cellular map of the human body, described as a “Google Maps of the body.”
The Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP for short) aims to create a kind of atlas that can be used mainly by doctors. It will help them visualize, study and understand the human body with an incredible level of detail.
How HuBMAP works
HuBMAP is made up of 18 collaborative research teams from across the United States and Europe. To map the human body, researchers take blood samples from different parts of the body from donors. These samples are then digitally intertwined to create the 3D human body map.
The first HuBMAP data were released this week: you can consult them on portal.hubmapconsortium.org.
Possible applications
An interactive human body map in the style of Google Maps can serve not only educational purposes. Showing the inside of our body with a detail never achieved in history is not everything in the world of Big Data.
HuBMAP could also be used to better plan strategies and approaches to treating diseases. Such as? The map, just like Google Maps, will have different views obtained from the different types of cells mapped.
It will be possible to observe the view of a body suffering from a particular disease, and by comparing the cells of the normal view and those of the diseased view to understand how a disease affects the body. One day, HuBMAP could be the database on which to build a "navigator" for lowercase medical nanobots able to travel in our body and distribute drugs.
“I've done many great projects in my career, but this is easily the most exciting,” says Silverstein. “It will be a great national asset for a long time.”
