Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a goal that's even more ambitious than connecting the entire world to the internet: He and his wife want to help eradicate all disease by the end of this century.

The Facebook founder is worth about $56bn, thanks to shares in his own company. Mr Zuckerberg has asked other shareholders to allow him to give away his stock without losing control of the company. Their announcement comes in the same week that Microsoft made a pledge to "solve the problem of cancer" within a decade by reprogramming diseased cells.

The software giant has vowed to use ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state.

This summer, Microsoft opened its first wet laboratory, where it will test out the findings of its computer scientists who are creating huge maps of the internal workings of cell networks.

The researchers are even working on a computer made from DNA which could live inside cells and look for faults in bodily networks, like cancer. If it spotted cancerous cells, it would reboot the system and clear out the diseased cells.

The mission of Chan Zuckerberg Science is to be innovative, bringing together engineers, physicists, chemists and physicians to solve hard human health problems. 

Zuckerberg said the initiative had built an engineering team that can partner with people to help build the tools that the whole scientific community can use to work on the different diseases and make a lot more progress than has been possible before.