Bionano Genomics to Support Largest Study to Date on COVID-19 Disease Susceptibility

April 1, 2020

SAN DIEGO, April 1, 2020  — Bionano Genomics, Inc. announced today the launch of the largest study to date aiming to identify genomic variants and novel active substances that influence resistance or sensitivity to the SARS-CoV2 virus, or COVID-19, disease progression and drug response. A variety of genomic and other biological variables will be compared between those patients who show no or mild symptoms and those who show severe illness. The study will control for viral strain differences, and for the known risk factors of age and chronic illness such as heart disease, diabetes, or other immune-compromising disease.

The first study of this kind is underway in Wuhan, China, and is being performed at the site of Wuhan-based GrandOmics, a service provider using Bionano technology. Now, the Hannover Medical School is launching a study involving 1,000 patients and controls, consisting of COVID-19 patients and their partners and first-degree relatives as controls. Partners have typically been intensely exposed to the same strain of the virus as the patients, and differences in disease severity can be caused by genetic variation. The participants will have their genomes analyzed using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), and Bionano Genome Imaging. Additionally, the study participants will undergo analysis of their transcriptome to look at gene expression, their metabolome, and a variety of immune markers such as cytokines and T-cell response. The goal of the study is to identify genomic variants that affect the disease, and immune or metabolic variables in the healthier participants that can protect against more severe disease, and to use this knowledge for the development of novel therapies and vaccines.

The study involves the teams of Dr. Doris Steinemann and Dr. Thomas Illig, who are part of the Resolving Infection Susceptibility (RESIST) Cluster which specifically focuses on the study of genomic variants that protect or predispose to infectious disease. They recently purchased Bionano’s Saphyr instrument and will be analyzing the study participant samples using the Saphyr System.

A number of companies have committed to supporting this study as part of a global Tech Against Covid initiative. Bionano is donating the consumables needed to analyze the structural variants in the samples. Rescale, the high-performance computing cloud platform fully integrated with Saphyr, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading provider of on-demand cloud computing, are donating compute time for the Bionano data analysis. Genoox, the platform for annotation and classification of genomic variants, will donate their compute resources to analyze the NGS data combined with Bionano’s structural variation calls for an integrated analysis of small and large genomic variants.

“The unprecedented challenge of COVID-19 requires the world’s top technology leaders to team up to fight for a vaccine,” said Shawn Hansen, COO of Rescale. “Now that cloud supercomputing resources have become available at no cost, leaders like Bionano are proving they can accomplish in hours what would have previously required days. We hope other market leaders will join the Tech Against Covid initiative to learn more about how they can accelerate research using cloud computing.”

“As we face the threat of COVID-19, we understand the significance of accelerating how fast researchers and scientists can drive time-to-insight,” said Barry Bolding, director, High Performance Computing, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “AWS is proud to be working with Bionano Genomics and Rescale to offer complimentary fully managed HPC capability that ramps up scientific data analysis quickly.”

Dr. Thomas Illig, head of the Hannover Biobank, commented: “In the past 18 years, novel coronaviruses have triggered two epidemics and the current COVID-19 pandemic, of which the full extent still can’t be predicted. Rapid measures are required to stop the current pandemic and to better prepare ourselves for new coronaviruses in the long term. We are thankful for the support of the Hannover Medical School, Bionano Genomics, Rescale, AWS, and Genoox, who allow us to scale to the needed study size. The Hannover Medical School and our teams at the RESIST cluster are ready to rapidly deploy this large, most powerful study on the human body’s fight against COVID-19.”

Erik Holmlin, PhD, CEO of Bionano Genomics, commented: “This study to identify genomic variants that influence the COVID-19 disease progression and intensity is an important step in the development of novel, targeted, antiviral therapies or vaccines. We believe that Bionano’s genome imaging technology is the only technology capable of detecting the structural variants that could protect against or predispose patients to the viral infection. After the first study started in the initial epicenter of the epidemic in Wuhan, we are now expanding the scope to other geographical areas including Europe. The research team will make the results from these studies available to the medical and research community, with the hope to help bring this global pandemic to a halt.”

About Bionano Genomics

Bionano is a genome analysis company providing tools and services based on its Saphyr system to scientists and clinicians conducting genetic research and patient testing. Bionano’s Saphyr system is a platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific structural variation detection that enables researchers and clinicians to accelerate the search for new diagnostics and therapeutic targets and to streamline the study of changes in chromosomes, which is known as cytogenetics. The Saphyr system is comprised of an instrument, chip consumables, reagents and a suite of data analysis tools, and genome analysis services to provide access to data generated by the Saphyr system for researchers who prefer not to adopt the Saphyr system in their labs. For more information, visit www.bionanogenomics.com.

About Tech Against Covid

Tech Against Covid is an initiative led by Rescale, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to offer supercomputing power to researchers, along with necessary end-to-end simulation tools, at no cost to teams working to develop test kits and vaccines for COVID-19. For more information, visit www.techagainstcovid.com.


Source: Bionano Genomics, Inc.

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!

Empowering High-Performance Computing for Artificial Intelligence

April 19, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) presents some of the most challenging demands in information technology, especially concerning computing power and data movement. As a result of these challenges, high-performance computing Read more…

Kathy Yelick on Post-Exascale Challenges

April 18, 2024

With the exascale era underway, the HPC community is already turning its attention to zettascale computing, the next of the 1,000-fold performance leaps that have occurred about once a decade. With this in mind, the ISC Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Texas Two Step

April 18, 2024

Texas Tech University. Their middle name is ‘tech’, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been fielding not one, but two teams in the last three Winter Classic cluster competitions. Their teams, dubbed Matador and Red Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: The Return of Team Fayetteville

April 18, 2024

Hailing from Fayetteville, NC, Fayetteville State University stayed under the radar in their first Winter Classic competition in 2022. Solid students for sure, but not a lot of HPC experience. All good. They didn’t Read more…

Software Specialist Horizon Quantum to Build First-of-a-Kind Hardware Testbed

April 18, 2024

Horizon Quantum Computing, a Singapore-based quantum software start-up, announced today it would build its own testbed of quantum computers, starting with use of Rigetti’s Novera 9-qubit QPU. The approach by a quantum Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet Team Morehouse

April 17, 2024

Morehouse College? The university is well-known for their long list of illustrious graduates, the rigor of their academics, and the quality of the instruction. They were one of the first schools to sign up for the Winter Read more…

Kathy Yelick on Post-Exascale Challenges

April 18, 2024

With the exascale era underway, the HPC community is already turning its attention to zettascale computing, the next of the 1,000-fold performance leaps that ha Read more…

Software Specialist Horizon Quantum to Build First-of-a-Kind Hardware Testbed

April 18, 2024

Horizon Quantum Computing, a Singapore-based quantum software start-up, announced today it would build its own testbed of quantum computers, starting with use o Read more…

MLCommons Launches New AI Safety Benchmark Initiative

April 16, 2024

MLCommons, organizer of the popular MLPerf benchmarking exercises (training and inference), is starting a new effort to benchmark AI Safety, one of the most pre Read more…

Exciting Updates From Stanford HAI’s Seventh Annual AI Index Report

April 15, 2024

As the AI revolution marches on, it is vital to continually reassess how this technology is reshaping our world. To that end, researchers at Stanford’s Instit Read more…

Intel’s Vision Advantage: Chips Are Available Off-the-Shelf

April 11, 2024

The chip market is facing a crisis: chip development is now concentrated in the hands of the few. A confluence of events this week reminded us how few chips Read more…

The VC View: Quantonation’s Deep Dive into Funding Quantum Start-ups

April 11, 2024

Yesterday Quantonation — which promotes itself as a one-of-a-kind venture capital (VC) company specializing in quantum science and deep physics  — announce Read more…

Nvidia’s GTC Is the New Intel IDF

April 9, 2024

After many years, Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was back in person and has become the conference for those who care about semiconductors and AI. I Read more…

Google Announces Homegrown ARM-based CPUs 

April 9, 2024

Google sprang a surprise at the ongoing Google Next Cloud conference by introducing its own ARM-based CPU called Axion, which will be offered to customers in it 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

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…

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…

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…

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…

Eyes on the Quantum Prize – D-Wave Says its Time is Now

January 30, 2024

Early quantum computing pioneer D-Wave again asserted – that at least for D-Wave – the commercial quantum era has begun. Speaking at its first in-person Ana Read more…

GenAI Having Major Impact on Data Culture, Survey Says

February 21, 2024

While 2023 was the year of GenAI, the adoption rates for GenAI did not match expectations. Most organizations are continuing to invest in GenAI but are yet to Read more…

The GenAI Datacenter Squeeze Is Here

February 1, 2024

The immediate effect of the GenAI GPU Squeeze was to reduce availability, either direct purchase or cloud access, increase cost, and push demand through the roof. A secondary issue has been developing over the last several years. Even though your organization secured several racks... Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire