California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative (CZI) are collaborating to advance scientific efforts in developing treatments and cures for the COVID-19 virus. CIRM will combine its data and infrastructure with CZI’s expertise in technology to find ways to treat the disease, the state announced this week.

“This will allow us to leverage our respective investments in genomic science in the fight against COVID-19.” said Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM in a press statement.

The collaborating entities share scientific data about COVID-19 for their researchers to build off each other’s work, accelerating toward understanding and finding treatments for the virus.

Additionally, the CIRM Board approved $5 million in emergency funding in March 2020 that currently supports 17 projects aimed at studying the impact of the virus at the single-cell level. CZI supports five projects studying the progression of COVID-19 in patients.

The data generated by the collaboration will be available to the scientific community via open-access datasets and portals.