Researchers have created an early map of some of the human body’s estimated 37.2 trillion cells. Each type of cell has a unique role, and knowing what all the cells do can help scientists better understand health and diseases such as cancer.

A N ADULT HUMAN body consists of some 37trn cells. Not so long ago, these were thought to come in 220 different types. That number, the product of painstaking decades spent peering through microscopes at slides bearing tissue sections coloured by chemical stains, gave a sense of the division of cellular labour needed to keep a body running.

Scientists from around the world are making headway in compiling a Human Cell Atlas -- a deep dive into the myriad types of cells in the body and their disparate roles in health and disease.

Coming less than a decade after its launch, the studies emerging from the global project are a major achievement. Funders should sign up for the long haul.

An ambitious project launched in 2016 has made a dent in one of biology’s greatest challenges — with more than 3,600 researchers profiling more than 100 million cells.

Scientists from around the world just published 40 papers focused on the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) project. The HCA seeks to profile myriad cell types from organs and tissues through

Spatial and single-cell data from 1.6 million cells have been combined to produce the most complete cell map of the human stomach to date.