CZ Virtual Cell Challenge

Open challenge to predict transcriptomic responses to genetic & chemical perturbations across cell types, hosted by CZ Biohub.

Composite
88.1
Experimental validation
Prospective
Stages
Virtual CellTarget ID
Modalities
cross-modality
Task types
perturbation-prediction
Size
cells: 2,000,000
perturbations: 300
License
CC-BY
First release
2024-11
Last updated
2025-09
Official site
→ project page
Leaderboard
→ leaderboard
Dataset
→ dataset
Code / GitHub
→ repository
HuggingFace
→ HF
Paper
CZ Virtual Cell Challenge (launch) · CZI Science Team · 2024 · paper · doi:N/A — consortium launch · 40 citations
Flags
none
Experts
Stephen Quake, Ambrose Carr
Groups
CZ Biohub San Francisco, CZI Science
Hosted by
CZI Virtual Cell / CellxGene / VCC
Related benchmarks
scPerturb, Open Problems: Perturbation Prediction, PerturbBench

Rubric (7-criterion)

rigor
4
coverage
5
maintenance
5
adoption
4
quality
5
accessibility
4
industry_relevance
4

Notes

Gold standard-in-the-making for foundation-model era perturbation prediction. Hidden test → strong against leakage.

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