Edico Genome will partner with Dell EMC to offer a bundled compute and storage solution designed to deliver rapid, cost-effective and accurate analysis, as well as efficient storage, of next-generation sequencing data.
The solution, announced yesterday, will combine Edico Genome’s DRAGEN processor integrated into a 1U Dell 4130 server for ultra-rapid genome analysis, as well as Dell EMC’s Isilon scale-out networked attached storage (NAS), which is cloud enabled and optimized via Isilon Cloud Pools to archive with the Virtustream Storage Cloud, and support third-party cloud providers.
The bundle is intended to enable analysis of a whole genome in 22 minutes, a process that now takes longer than a day using standard software. Applications for rapid genomic analysis include faster diagnoses for critically ill newborns, cancer patients and expecting parents undergoing prenatal testing, as well as faster answers for drug developers and researchers, Edico Genome and Dell EMC said.
“This solution will help enable hospitals, academic medical centers, clinical labs and research organizations to more efficiently deliver personalized patient care for disease treatment and prevention, improve outcomes and advance science to clinical practice,” David DeAngelis, general manager, global healthcare team, Dell EMC, said in a statement.
The bundle is comprised of three tiers, based on throughput:
- Small –Up to 100 terabytes, envisioned for children’s hospitals, neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) or pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) implementing sequencing capabilities.
- Medium—100 to 250 terabytes, designed for Academic genomic centers and researchers studying areas with big data demands, such as imaging or three-dimensional (3-D) genome sequencing
- Large—250 terabytes to 1 petabyte, for major sequencing centers and users managing the data throughput of Illumina HiSeq X Ten system(s)
DRAGEN uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to provide hardware-accelerated implementations of genome pipeline algorithms. Its features include optimized, hardware-based algorithms for mapping, alignment, sorting and variant calling.
Edico Genome says DRAGEN allows for development of custom algorithms as well as refinement and improvement of existing pipelines. Multiple end-to-end, clinical-grade pipelines are available, including genome/exome, transcriptome/RNA-seq, epigenome/methyl-seq, metagenome/microbiome, joint genotyping and GATK 3.6. Updated versions are offered through regular, simple remote downloads.
“By combining the efficiency of Dell EMC’s compute, storage and Virtustream Storage Cloud platforms with the speed and accuracy of DRAGEN, we are able to offer a complete, cost-effective solution for rapid genomic analysis to both of our customers,” added Edico Genome CEO Pieter van Rooyen, Ph.D.
