Biodesign, TGen Form New Computational Biology Center

By Nicole Hemsoth

February 10, 2006

To help usher in a new era of molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine, Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have teamed up to establish the Center for Systems and Computational Biology.

The new center, one of the first of its kind in the nation, will accelerate the pace of biomedical research, directly affect patient care and provide new funding opportunities for TGen and ASU.

George Poste, director of the Biodesign Institute, and Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of TGen, will oversee the center.

Systems biology is an emerging science that requires highly integrated efforts between biologists, physicians, chemists, engineers and computer scientists. It combines “wet lab” research with “dry lab” computational technologies to help identify the molecular pathways relevant to disease. The resulting benefits to medicine may include better clinical trials, personalized therapies and improved diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.

“Much of our focus at the Biodesign Institute is in trying to understand biological function and the significance of disease at the most fundamental level – its molecular circuitry,” Poste says. “This knowledge has enormous implications for every aspect of medicine, as well as other fields of science.”

“At TGen, our focus is entirely on developing earlier diagnostics and smarter treatments,” Trent adds. “This new collaboration leverages the fast-growing field of computational biology to speed research and directly impact patients. Additionally, this partnership opens the door to new research and funding avenues for TGen and ASU.”

Accelerating research

The Center for Systems and Computational Biology will use the extraordinary power of the ASU-TGen supercomputer to accelerate research by quickly analyzing the billions of data points generated by genetic research. For example, a researcher at a major U.S. university estimated it would take him 3.4 years to analyze his clinical trial data. By using the ASU-TGen supercomputer, the analysis was completed in less than three days.

“This leading edge Biodesign-TGen partnership will facilitate the acceleration of research to develop smarter treatments and targeted therapies tailored to an individual,” Trent says.

Patient impact

The new center will directly affect patients by providing the technology needed to interpret data and understand the underlying genetic cause of disease. For example, in 2004, researchers at TGen uncovered the genetic basis for one form of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). This discovery was made by mining genetic information from nine families living in a small Old Order Amish community in central Pennsylvania. The underlying genetic cause was found to be abnormalities in a specific gene. Mapping and identification of the gene was performed in less than two months.

Poste explains that, despite knowing that diseases and patients are not uniform, medical science is unable to tailor therapies to an individual, leading to treatments that are ineffective in some people or cause serious adverse reactions in others. Annually, more than 2 million people are hospitalized, and between 80,000 and 120,000 die from adverse drug reactions.

“This is the most important reason the one-size-fits-all approach to drug treatment cannot continue,” Poste says. “We urgently need the right drug for the right subtype of disease, and the right drug for the right patient. Fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine is dependent upon unraveling this complexity.”

New funding opportunities

The center will open a channel for additional research, funding and economic opportunities for collaboration with industry and other institutions to commercialize platform technologies, license intellectual property and create spinoff companies.

“We are rapidly moving toward a day when the complete digitization of all biological and medical data will be possible,” Poste says. “In the coming decade, we will be able to capture millions of measurements from just a single drop of blood.”

Plans for the new center include recruitment of a world-class scientist to direct the center, as well as additional leading researchers. Two highly talented biocomputing scientists – Michael Bittner at TGen and Sudhir Kumar at the Biodesign Institute – also will participate to launch innovative new programs.

The expert team will rely on scientists at ASU and TGen, shared faculty appointments between institutions, and the supercomputing facilities at ASU. The center also will interact closely with ASU's new School of Computing and Informatics, directed by Sethuraman Panchanathan, and the Arizona Biomedical Collaborative (ABC) building, which is under construction downtown.

This new effort adds to the list of partnerships among the institutions. In their brief histories, the Biodesign Institute and TGen have demonstrated a strong degree of collaboration and support.

The Biodesign Institute launched a joint spinoff company, NanoBiomics, in 2004 to develop and commercialize genomic-based diagnostics using nanoscale-processing technologies.

NanoBiomics was recognized as the start-up company of the year last spring by the Arizona BioIndustry Association. It then was acquired by a local start-up, Molecular Profiling Inc., which was based in part on research done at TGen.

Molecular Profiling applies molecular diagnostics to designing personalized care for cancer patients and has forged major alliances with AmeriPath Inc. and U.S. Oncology.

“We are at the very early stages of using systems biology as an important approach to drug discovery and development,” Poste says. “Our ability to make useful measurements has far outpaced our ability to utilize them. Biological systems are of such complexity, and the ability to assemble the relevant clinical, biological and biochemical knowledge is a serious barrier to the effective use of this data.”

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire