Genome Research & Cloud Computing Helps Discover Cures

CURE DISCOVERY IS PROMOTED BY GENOME RESEARCH AND CLOUD COMPUTING.

- Keith Perry

When Francis Collins and his team at the National Human Genome Research Institute published the majority of the human genome in 2001, he likened the genome to a book with multiple uses.

“It’s a history book [...] a shop manual [...] and a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent, and cure disease.”

The story of genome research had just begun.

As biomedical researchers began delving into genome data, and subsequently adding their own chapters to the “book,” a new challenge arose: how to store, access, and share the massive amounts of data being generated. The scientific community needed new tools to enable data sharing and research collaboration.

Thankfully, advances in cloud computing have grown alongside the robust analysis of genome research to enable an unprecedented level of data sharing in the scientific world. Research driven cloud computing platforms enable enhanced worldwide information sharing to support science to find cures for life threatening diseases, including pediatric cancer.

Each year, about 10,000 children in the U.S. under the age of 14 are diagnosed with cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, the five year survival rate among children is 80 percent. It’s a significant improvement from the 1970s, when the five-year survival rate was 50 percent, but there is still a long way to go.