Parse Biosciences, a QIAGEN company, and proteomics specialist Nomic Bio have announced a partnership to create Cascade, a foundational dataset designed to help researchers model the human immune response and identify potential drug targets.
The project will combine single-cell and protein-level measurements collected across multiple timepoints. It is planned to include 100 million single-cell RNA-seq profiles and more than 11,000 proteomic secretome profiles, covering immune-cell responses to more than 150,000 individual and combined cytokine and drug perturbation conditions.
By pairing transcriptomic and proteomic data from the same immune responses, Cascade is intended to provide insight into the mechanisms behind human immune signaling. The companies say this could help address a shortage of data for developing predictive virtual-cell models and improve the ability of pharmaceutical researchers to identify and validate therapeutic targets.
The dataset has received initial commitments from GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi, Graph Therapeutics and Turbine. Parse will generate the single-cell RNA-seq data at its GigaLab, a high-throughput facility capable of profiling billions of cells annually. Nomic will produce the proteomic secretome measurements using its Omini 1000 platform, which measures more than 1,000 secreted proteins across the samples.
Charlie Roco, Parse Biosciences’ co-founder and chief technology officer, said that biological AI development is constrained by limited data on human immune responses to important perturbations, including cytokines and drugs. He described Cascade as a step toward revealing these interactions and increasing the predictive capability of partner AI models.