Our Mission

The Virtual Human Development Consortium brings together a global community of scholars and policy makers around the central goal of creating a computer-based simulator of human embryonic development. Our mission is to produce a state of the art simulator with the ability to predict efficiently and effectively the outcome of cellular tissue and potential regenerative therapies.

The simulator will be a powerful tool that will:

1. Provide a window into the formation of the human body, catalyzing new hypotheses for the developmental biology field to push the boundaries outside of what we know about our origins; and
2. Serve as a platform for rational cellular design, allowing us to engineer biological substrates for regenerative medicine. The model can also be adapted for personalized medicine approaches.

Such a simulator will be the key tool to catalyze rapid rounds of computational modeling in the biotechnology sector, fueling the design-build-test cycle for lab-grown cells and tissues. Our aim is to produce an impactful  simulator analogous to that of established simulation platforms for physics and chemistry, which have facilitated the rapid growth of complex engineered systems, such as computing platforms. It will serve as a tool for simulating engineered developmental systems, leading to robust bioprocesses for manufacturing designer cells, tissues, and organs on-demand.

Our Approach

Virtual Human Development will serve as an intellectual sandbox for international groups to understand and build biology together, guided by our common mission. We will collectively develop and integrate our knowledge into a human embryo simulation platform in line with the ethics, legal and social implications of embryo simulation. To enable this, we have three core values:

Collaboration: We will take an open-science approach, fostering best practices in equity, diversity and inclusivity to intersect experts from diverse fields, ways of thinking, and geographical locations.

Integrity: We will foster an environment of scientific integrity, ensuring we apply best practices and know-how to generate reliable experimental datasets and modeling frameworks.

Posterity: We believe in the importance of training and guiding the next generation of innovators who will build on and expand our consortium’s progress in developing a human embryo simulator. To do this, we will embed trainees in our governance structure and dedicate resources to ensure they are well-supported and trained in professional and technical skills.