Beijing launches mega plan on life, medical sciences

BEIJING -- A mega science plan was launched Thursday in Beijing's Huairou Science City, aimed at advancing research in life sciences and major diseases by using artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies.

Dubbed "Digital Life", the plan was initiated by the National Biomedical Imaging Center (NBIC) at Peking University on the basis of the Multimode Trans-Scale Biomedical Imaging Facility, one of China's key scientific infrastructure projects.

The NBIC will launch the first batch of 13 key projects in collaboration with universities, research institutes and hospitals. These projects will cover biomedical issues such as digital brain addiction mechanisms, AI decoding of the biological clock, digital heart, digital bone marrow, digital stem cells, and digital tumors and tumor microenvironment.

The rapid development in technologies, such as big data and AI, is profoundly transforming the research paradigm in biomedicine. Traditional methods have struggled to integrate cross-scale information spanning molecules, cells, organs and even the entire life activities.

On the other hand, the trans-scale, multimodal and visualized observations, precise measurements of the structures and functions of living organisms, as well as digital depiction of the mechanisms of life and diseases, will bring new insights to complex life sciences and the study of major diseases.

"The mega plan will be committed to solving the challenge of integrating trans-scale data in complex life systems, cracking the code of life, and providing key technological support for the study of disease mechanisms and the development of precision medicine," said Cheng Heping, the NBIC director and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the center's deputy director Chen Liangyi, experts from various fields such as biology, medicine, and agriculture will work to enable the digital decoding of cells, organs and living organisms, thereby better revealing the mechanisms of physiological and pathological processes.

The Multimode Trans-Scale Biomedical Imaging Facility is one of the ten priority projects determined in China's construction plan for major national sci-tech infrastructure during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). The facility was built by Peking University, Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other institutions, and passed national acceptance in March 2025.