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Abstract

Image-based profiling decodes complex cellular states for high-impact biological and therapeutic applications, yet a large, public reference dataset of chemical perturbations has been lacking. We present Cell Painting images and 1.53 billion single-cell profiles for 115,796 compounds in human osteosarcoma cells, generated by the Joint Undertaking for Morphological Profiling (JUMP)-Cell Painting Consortium of 18 industry and non-profit partners. Despite technical variability across 12 data-generating laboratories, more than 15% of compounds show statistically significant phenotypic activity, reproducibility drops only 34% versus single-laboratory data, and compounds sharing biological targets often show similar image-based profiles. JUMP establishes a validated public reference resource that brings image-based profiling on par with genomics and transcriptomics. The dataset, shared alongside previously released genetic perturbation data in the Cell Painting Gallery, is a powerful predictive engine for the impact, mechanism, targets and activities of compounds, fundamentally accelerating chemical and cell biology and early-stage drug development.

02 /Specification & Classification

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In-depth summary

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Claude Opus 5.5 · xhigh effort · 8 Nov 2026 · from the full text of version 4 (3 Nov 2026) · CC BY 4.0

Cell Painting images and profiles for 115,796 compounds in U2OS cells from 12 laboratories; 15.2% of analyzed compounds are phenotypically active, and cross-laboratory replicates cut reference-compound activity by 34%.

Matching query compound, gene or disease profiles against a public reference of Cell Painting profiles can suggest mechanisms or chemical starting points, yet the largest earlier public chemical sets covered 30,616 compounds (Broad Institute) or about 1,500 each. JUMP is larger and was deliberately generated at 12 laboratories with five microscope types, testing whether multi-site image data can be pooled into one queryable reference.

Key results

  1. ShownPhenotypic signal persists across 12 laboratories, though cross-laboratory replicates detect fewer active reference compounds than within-laboratory replicates; activity is only partly explained by cell loss.

    17,069 of 112,462 compounds (15.2%) separated from DMSO at FDR < 0.10 (copairs mAP). On the 301-compound Target-2 plate, 77% were active with within-laboratory replicates vs 51% with cross-laboratory replicates after Harmony correction (a 34% reduction). Active compounds had median 411 vs 457 cells/mm^2; cell density vs activity Spearman rho = -0.33. · Phenotypic signal is detectable and reproducible…; Phenotypic activity and consistency metrics; Within-source and pooled-source reproducibility…

  2. ShownCompounds sharing a mechanism of action (MOA) or target tend to have similar profiles, supporting guilt-by-association mechanism hypotheses; using data across laboratories needs more replicates.

    For MOA-annotated active compounds, the nearest phenotypic neighbor shared the MOA in 21.2% of cases vs 1.3% under label permutation (16-fold), with same-scaffold compounds excluded. Many targets, MOAs and disease areas were consistent across nine annotation sets. 2-3 replicates within a laboratory, or 4-5 across laboratories, gave 90% of maximal MOA consistency. · Image-based profiles can predict the targets and…; Phenotypic activity and consistency metrics; Within-source and pooled-source reproducibility…; Structure-phenotype analysis

  3. SuggestedA small separate experiment queried against JUMP linked two PPARG inverse agonist series to cell-cycle targets; follow-up assays indicated G1 arrest and senescence resembling the CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib.

    Five BAY compounds profiled in duplicate in UM-UC-9 cells best matched JUMP compounds annotated to CDK, RRM and TOP2A; PPARG-targeting compounds were mostly filtered out as inactive in U2OS. UM-UC-9 queries matched better than U2OS ones. Flow cytometry showed more G1 and fewer S/M cells; p-Rb (S780) fell and SASP genes (TNF, CXCL10, CCL5, IL6) and beta-gal-positive cells rose. · Image profile matching identifies PPARG inverse…; PPARG plates Pearson correlation; PPARG plates target association; Cell Cycle Analysis

  4. ShownScaffolds partly predict morphology, but per-compound structural and morphological neighborhoods overlap little; the data yield lists of on/off activity cliffs and phenotypic cliffs, the latter enriched for pairs without a shared target.

    158/262 (60.3%) Bemis-Murcko scaffolds were more self-similar than size-matched random groups. Per compound, k=50 neighborhood Jaccard overlap was 0.010 vs 0.0015 expected. 19% of structurally similar pairs were on/off activity cliffs; 4,089 of 12,920 similar active pairs had profile cosine < 0.3, and 59.7% of 159 annotated cliff pairs shared no target vs 29.5% of concordant pairs (OR 3.5). · Image-based profiles reflect structure-activity…; Structure-phenotype analysis; Activity cliff detection

  5. ShownMorphology adds little over chemical structure for predicting pan-assay interference (PAINS) status, organism-level toxicity (DICT, DILI), pharmacokinetics or most ToxCast and ChEMBL assay activities; mitotoxicity and a few cell-based nuclear-receptor and stress assays are exceptions.

    PAINS (scaffold split): ROC-AUC 0.634 from profiles vs 0.634 from MW/LogP/TPSA and 0.547 from cell count (0.660 combined). 95 ToxCast assays: median AUC 0.611 vs 0.674 for fingerprints and 0.538 for cell count; 51 ChEMBL targets: 0.563 vs 0.584. ECFP4 beat profiles for cardiotoxicity (DICT), liver injury (DILI) and pharmacokinetics. Exceptions: CAR 0.854 vs 0.607, FXR 0.807 vs 0.687, mitotoxicity. · Image-based profiles predict only certain…; Predicting Activities from Cell Painting…; PAINS prediction

Methods, data and reproducibility

Partner laboratories exchanged nominated compounds and imaged them with Cell Painting (six dyes, five channels) in U2OS cells at 10 μM for 48 h, typically five replicates spread over several sites. CellProfiler features were averaged per well, normalized to DMSO, feature-selected and Harmony-corrected; activity and target/MOA consistency were scored by permutation-tested mean average precision (copairs).

  • JUMP cpg0016 compound Cell Painting data: images, CellProfiler single-cell and well-level profiles from 12 laboratories (Source 7 excluded from analysis) · human (U2OS osteosarcoma cells) · n = 115,796 compounds (112,462 analyzed); 1,533,879,336 single-cell profiles · cpg0016-jump (Cell Painting Gallery); analyzed profiles in cpg0042-chandrasekaran-jump
  • JUMP-Target-2-Compound reference plate run in most batches for alignment and cross-laboratory reproducibility · human (U2OS) · n = 301 compounds annotated to 160 proteins
  • Previously published JUMP ORF overexpression and CRISPR knockout profiles, used for CDK4/6 and PPARG gene comparisons · human (U2OS) · n = over 15,000 genes; 23,393 gene-reagents in similarity matrix · cpg0016-jump
  • PPARG inverse agonist experiment: five BAY compounds, tool compounds and Target-2 reference compounds, profiled in duplicate per compound-concentration · human (U2OS; UM-UC-9 bladder cancer cell line) · n = 2 cell lines; duplicate plates
  • ChEMBL 33 single-protein target annotations (active if mean pChEMBL > 5) · n = 68,211 annotations; 17,892 compounds; 102 targets (77 human) · Zenodo record 21800106
  • Drug Repurposing Hub (2020-03-24), Chemical Probes Portal and MOTIVE knowledge-graph target/MOA annotations, plus UniChem/MyChem and MolPort mappings · n = 13,091 compounds with any target or MOA annotation · MOTIVE: Zenodo record 18197517
  • Activity-prediction endpoints: ToxCast invitrodb v4.3, ChEMBL targets, DICTrank, DILIrank v2, MitoTox, curated human pharmacokinetic parameters · n = 95 ToxCast assays; 51 ChEMBL targets; 366 DICT, 356 DILI, 246 MitoTox
  • EPA CompTox functional-use annotations (curated categories and predicted probabilities) · n = 427 with curated categories; 7,651 with predicted probabilities
Methods & tools
Cell Painting assay (PhenoVue Cell Painting Kit 2.0), CellProfiler, jump-profiling-recipe (pycytominer), Harmony, copairs (mean average precision), Cell Painting CNN (CP-CNN), RDKit, scikit-learn HistGradientBoosting, UMAP (rapids_singlecell / scanpy), scIB metrics (graph iLISI, kBET), Morpheus, ChEMBL 33
Software & environment
CellProfiler 4.0.7, 4.1.3 or 4.2.1 (headless); profiles v1.0 (compound_no_source7); ChEMBL release 33 (pinned SQLite); Drug Repurposing Hub 2020-03-24 export; ToxCast invitrodb v4.3; MolPort archive of Jan 24, 2026; FlowJo v10.8.1.
Assay conditions & compute
CellProfiler ran headless on Amazon Web Services via Distributed-CellProfiler or on high-performance computing clusters; PCA, neighbor search and UMAP used GPU (rapids_singlecell) when available, else scanpy on CPU. Data volumes: 127 TB images, 56 TB single-cell profiles.
Reproducibility gaps
The paper's own GitHub repository (e.g., chembl_targets_sqlite.py) and the JUMP_rr and consensus-profile archives are referenced without printed URLs; archives omit some annotation tables; not every data product exists for every source; the Hub and JUMP_rr change over time.
Limitations (6)
  • Only U2OS cells were used outside the pilots; a cell line lacking a compound's protein targets cannot show a phenotype, and most PPARG-targeting compounds were inactive in U2OS. · stated by the authors
  • Each compound was tested at a single 10 μM concentration without dose response, which can miss subtle phenotypes or give cytotoxic outcomes; Source 7's 0.625 μM screen was excluded. · stated by the authors
  • Cross-source signal loss (34%) persists after Harmony; feature extraction, normalization and batch correction were optimized separately, single-cell data were collapsed to well profiles, and quality control differed by partner with no standard method. · stated by the authors
  • Direct gene-compound matching against the JUMP ORF and CRISPR data mostly fails so far, partly because the chemical and genetic sets were processed into different feature spaces; it remains an open challenge. · stated by the authors
  • The external-query demonstration is one small set of PPARG inverse agonists (two chemical series, five BAY compounds, profiled in duplicate), imaged with the JUMP protocol at the Broad and aligned jointly with JUMP data; it is a case study, not a systematic retrieval benchmark. · noted in this summary
  • Toxicity benchmarks are small (246 MitoTox, 356 DILI, 366 DICT compounds), so modest gains from morphology may be hard to detect. · noted in this summary

Who should read:Read this if you want a public multi-laboratory Cell Painting reference for compound mechanism or target hypotheses, or a large real-world dataset for testing batch correction and image-based profiling methods.

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