Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg together with his wife Priscilla Chan has formed the Chan-Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub. The couple aims to complement public health institutions in biomedical research in the bid to find a cure for diseases.

According to Nature, the CZ Biohub has chosen 47 researchers from three Bay Area universities. The chosen scientists from the University of San Francisco, California, California, Berkeley and Stanford will receive up to $1.5 million each. The grants will be given in the next five years for various research topics including genomics and other "risky" ventures that won't get grants from traditional funding.

There were over 750 researchers from the Bay Universities who applied for the CZ Biohub grant. CZ Biohub co-leader Stephen Quake says that they reviewed all the proposals filled with "risky" ideas and chose awardees based on their ideas that could promising results.

Quake adds that those who have been granted by the CZ Biohub would likely get a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant later. He hopes that their research would yield preliminary data as evidence, a major factor for traditional funding institutes like the NIH.

CZ Biohub's Aim

The goal of the CZ Biohub is to find a cure, manage and ward off diseases. While most research institutes single out a specific kind of disease like cancer, allergies or muscular dystrophy, CZ Biohub aims to take more strides in all kinds of research pertaining to disease. According to Tech Crunch, Biohub co-president Joe DeRisi says that CZ Biohub will focus more on finding new information about diseases instead of having and end goal. There is no competition among grant recipients or prize for researchers with most findings.

What do you think of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's biomedical research initiative via CZ Biohub? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

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