Public-Private Partnership Utilizes HPC to Aid Pediatric Cancer Research

photo of doctor with child patient and parent above quote from TGen executiveIn 2011, Dell announced a major commitment of cloud and HPC technology, employee engagement and funding to support pediatric cancer research programs, including a groundbreaking personalized medicine trial for pediatric cancer conducted by the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) and supported by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

As an extension of that ongoing collaboration, TGen announced this week that, with the help of Dell, it is now providing state-of-the-art computing and programing specialized for human genome investigations at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The foundation for this work is the Dell Genomic Data Analysis Platform, which is designed and optimized to deliver high-throughput and fast turnaround of genomic workflows. It integrates easily with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) machines and writes sequenced data directly into the system’s computational scratch space for processing. Output data and user files are then network-accessed by researchers for further investigation.

The brains of the operation is TGen’s high performance computing and bioinformatics support, as well as specialized software and tools developed over the last three years as TGen and Dell have partnered in support of pediatric cancer research programs globally.

By advancing HPC solutions at the NCI, Dell and TGen are helping to accelerate the federal agency’s efforts to support and enable precision therapy trials and to make important scientific discoveries.

For kids battling incurable cancers, that’s a priceless advantage. 

About the Author: Christine Fronczak