Oxford-Johnson & Johnson Cartography Collaboration

The Cartography Collaboration: Advancing Precision Medicine for IMIDs

In 2020, the University of Oxford initiated a strategic collaboration with Johnson & Johnson to create a comprehensive cellular atlas across multiple immune-mediated inflammatory disorders (IMIDs). This groundbreaking partnership aims to unravel the cellular mechanisms underlying IMIDs and accelerate the development of innovative therapies.

Our Mission

The Cartography Project is building a detailed cellular map of genes and proteins involved in IMIDs, identifying pharmacologically relevant therapeutic targets, and enhancing our understanding of disease mechanisms. The ultimate goal is to empower precision medicine by enabling treatments tailored to individual patients and facilitating the development of new therapies.

Why IMIDs?

IMIDs affect a significant portion of the global population. Although genetic studies, functional analyses, and clinical observations have revealed substantial overlap in the pathways driving these conditions across different organ systems, the precise cellular mechanisms remain elusive. 

Our Approach

The Cartography Collaboration leverages cutting-edge molecular and cellular multi-omics technologies, including:

• Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq)
• Bulk RNA sequencing
• CITE-seq
• Serum/plasma proteomics
• Spatial transcriptomics

These methods, combined with state-of-the-art computational tools, enable the integration and analysis of extensive datasets across the disease spectrum.

Key Achievements

Phase 1 (2020): Established core experimental SOPs and data analysis pipelines to ensure reproducible and comparable datasets. This phase focused on inflammatory diseases of the intestine, joints, and skin.

Phase 2 (2022): Expanded the project to include oncology and neuroscience, broadening its impact across additional therapeutic areas.

Phase 3 (2024): With over 4 million high-quality transcriptomes, the collaboration entered a new phase focused on in-depth analysis of curated cellular atlases. This phase also includes the development of a multidimensional data viewer to democratize access to the dataset.

Impact

The Cartography Atlases are already delivering novel insights into disease mechanisms, drug target selection, and precision medicine for inflammatory diseases affecting various organ systems. The availability of these unique datasets has already enabled both Oxford and J&J to rapidly fill gaps in knowledge within ongoing research.  Ultimately these advancements are poised to transform patient care and therapeutic development.