On October 22nd-23rd, 2020, the 2020 Human Cell Atlas Asia meeting was held online. It was co-organized by Human Cell Atlas, Zhejiang University, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor GUO Guoji, School of Medicine, ZJU, is the Chair of this Meeting.

Aviv Regev is a professor of biology at MIT and the co-chair of the organizing committee for the international Human Cell Atlas project. In this meeting, she introduced the partnership across programs from health to disease. She used a single cell atlas of the healthy and UC colonic mucosa as an example and told us that the atlas was also be used to understand the COVID-19. Finally, she stated the HCA principles and values, and called on everyone to bring together the community and the mission. More than 50 experts gave their lectures and discussions about COVID-19 related cell atlas research, technology development, computational analysis, cancer cell atlas, developmental atlas and genetic diversity. Replays can be viewed by https://space.bilibili.com/7944116.

The meeting shared the latest research works of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) Project and discussed key issues such as Atlas integration, ethics and data sharing. The meeting provided information for the cooperation and future development of the Human Cell Atlas Asia Project and provided a good academic communication platform for experts in related fields. At the same time, it also strengthened Zhejiang University’s international influence in HCA field.