The Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and Biohub announced a memorandum of understanding on October 7, 2026 to build a biological data foundation for predictive models of living systems. The partnership aims to improve understanding of how cells respond to interventions.
DOE says it is investing more than $500 million over five years in fundamental cell research covering data collection, analytics, laboratory measurement, imaging, modeling and computation. Biohub is investing $500 million over five years in its Virtual Biology Initiative. The announcement describes separate investments, not a single new $1 billion grant paid to NIH.
The partners plan to combine DOE national-laboratory computing and biological expertise, Biohub research infrastructure and NIH health-data and imaging resources. The stated goal is an open data foundation for predictive biology.
DOE lists exascale computing, genome and molecular research facilities, automated laboratories and biological data systems among the resources supporting the work. Those assets are inputs to a research effort, not evidence that a complete virtual cell or a reliable model of every disease already exists.
Biohub describes accurate predictive biology as a potential way to run experiments digitally and accelerate discovery. That is a research goal. The announcement does not report a clinical outcome, an approved treatment or independent validation of a finished predictive system.
The useful milestone is the signed research partnership and its planned data work. Future releases will need to establish what datasets are available, which predictions are validated and how the work translates into usable scientific results.