The Human Immunome Project is one of the most ambitious projects in biology, and it could transform human health.

David Cox:

The scale of this challenge is exponentially greater than the Human Genome Project, the international effort to sequence all 3 billion base pairs in human DNA and map all 20,000 human genes, which took more than a decade to complete. The data in the human immunome is millions of times larger and vastly more complex. It does not merely include the legions of lymphocytes, neutrophils, and monocytes/macrophages, which biologists have pieced together and studied over many decades, but all of the interactions these cells have, over a person’s life, with pathogens, toxins, and the consequences of their diet and lifestyle.

How all of this shapes an individual’s immunity does not just vary from person to person based on their genetics and exposures but is constantly shifting over the course of their lifetime.