Appistry Joins GIS to Accelerate Genomics in Asia

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*STAR) Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) has announced the launch of a research collaboration with Appistry, a leading US-based provider of high-performance computing and analytics for managing and storing "big data."

"We are excited about this collaboration as it leverages on our computational genomics platform," said Professor Huck Hui NG, GIS executive director.

Professor Hui NG continued, "Through this collaboration, we will develop a pipeline which enables us to analyze next generation sequencing data more effectively."

"Appistry's technology will enable GIS to take a huge amount of data and rapidly advance their analytics and efficiently use their science to improve public health," said Sultan Meghji, Appistry's vice president of product strategy, who is speaking today on life science's "big data" challenge at the World Genome Data Analysis Summit in San Francisco.

GIS strategically focuses on scientific discovery through a fusion of genomic and computational approaches with cell and medical biology.

The collaboration is dedicated to accelerating the development of research methods and discoveries in human genome analytics and genomics.

GIS aims to act as an Asian hub for collaboration among clinical genomics researchers in many pioneering fields, including clinical diagnostics and cancer biology.

"We expect this collaboration to inspire, enable, and accelerate efforts in the emerging field of complex pedigree and traits analytics and to catalyze discoveries and advance the understanding of this important area of biology," said Prof. Michael Rossbach, head of the Office of Business Development at GIS.

GIS's regional research collaboration with Appistry builds upon Appistry's recent selection as the distributor for The Broad Institute's next generation Genome Analysis Tool Kit (GATK), the world's most widely used software for data processing and variant calling of next-generation sequencing data.

"The push toward translational and personalized medicine requires organizations to wrap their science within systems and applications that can provide actionable results from big data," said Meghji.

Meghji continued, "Our global partnership with Broad and our regional partnership with GIS better enable our customers to capture the scientific best practices and capabilities they need in an environment that scales to modern throughput demands."

Meghji's presentation at the World Genome Data Analysis Summit can be viewed online at www.appistry.com/wgdas.