HPCwire: Accelerating Life Science and Bioinformatics Applications…As if Our Lives Depended on IT

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March 11, 2009

Accelerating Life Science and Bioinformatics Applications…As if Our Lives Depended on IT

by Mike Calise, Executive Vice President and US General Manager at Mitrionics

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Integrating the latest breakthroughs in biochemistry, high performance computing, optical processing, and storage is enabling remarkable advances in the fields of healthcare, drug discovery, and genomic research. Together, they are creating exciting personal therapeutic strategies for living longer, healthier lifestyles that were unimaginable until now.

Genomics technology is now capable of determining a person's predisposition to threatening diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and more. Personal healthcare information that was previously unattainable or unaffordable can be purchased for the price of picking up the tab for a fine dinner with friends.

The recent surge in consumer genomics has led to knowledge about oneself that is staggering, but it's just the beginning. Imagine having your entire genome information at your fingertips, helping you and your doctor make informed, customized decisions about drug dosages and their effectiveness in preventing and curing diseases for your body. For instance, a man could learn whether taking regular doses of Finasteride, would reduce or prevent the possibility of prostate cancer, while feeling confident that the drug would cause few or no side effects. But this is only the beginning of the many life science achievements forecast to take place within the next few years, such as new designer drugs genetically tailored for specific genotypes.

High performance computing technologies will be at the forefront of the personal healthcare revolution, making it possible to realize and accelerate radical medical breakthroughs.

New Technology Collapsing Costs

To reach this objective, next- and "3rd" generation gene sequencers will be key technology components that exponentially drive down the costs of determining one's entire personal genome. Costs are plummeting because the process for creating genome data is being radically affected by the newest technologies incorporating high performance compute capabilities in the workflow.

Without next/third generation gene sequencers coupled to accelerated computing technologies and parallel processing algorithms, such advances in the "personal" healthcare industry might not be possible, at least not in a reasonable time to maximize the sequencing analysis to affect peoples' lives in the near future.

With HPC capability comes the hyper-exponential growth of digital information in the form of useful yet extensive and unruly datasets. Beyond capture and create, the secondary analysis of this astronomical data growth will push even the newest computing technologies to their physical and practical limits. Fortunately, as sequencing instruments break new ground, so do the compute acceleration technologies designed to tackle these new bioinformatics challenges.

Choosing the Appropriate HPC Platform

The nearly limitless range of bioscience research application requirements for various accelerated hybrid-computing technologies leaves room for choice and error when considering appropriate systems. For many researchers and technologists, choosing the best HPC and acceleration technologies can be daunting because they have not yet been fully implemented in standard, commercially-available mainstream platforms. Consequently, bioinformaticists, drug developers and IT specialists have to be close in mindset and cross-functional in their disciplines to determine and optimize the correct mix of hardware and software.

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