BioDatomics Increases NGS Research Productivity with Launch of 100 Times Faster, More Intuitive Data Analysis Software

BioDatomics have introduced the company’s first commercial product, BioDT™, an open source suite of next generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis software and services. The launch took place at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2013 meeting in Boston, October 22-26.

 

NGS data analysis is now considered an essential tool for basic and clinical genomic research. While the Big Data generated by such research can be acquired more quickly and at a lower cost, it has become increasingly difficult to derive meaningful insights from it. Existing solutions have proven slow, with complex yet inflexible user interfaces, long turnaround times and difficult-to-interpret results. These shortcomings have meant higher costs and delays in potential breakthroughs.

 

BioDT is an open source platform capable of analyzing NGS data up to 100 times faster than similar systems, thanks to a proprietary execution engine and a Hadoop®-based architecture. Together, these techniques reduce analysis turnaround times from days—or even weeks—to hours. Further increasing productivity is BioDT’s support for real-time collaboration between geographically-dispersed colleagues. 

 

By making data analysis simple, fast and intuitive—without the need for specialized expertise in bioinformatics—BioDT promises to bring the power of NGS to a wider array of labs and researchers across the world. The platform’s drag-and-drop interface and rich data visualization eliminate the need for cumbersome Command Line Programming and reliance on tabular results (although both are supported for those who are proficient with them).  

 

“We use NGS data analysis tools extensively, and are constantly surveying the market for the latest advances,” said Indresh Singh, Core Informatics Services Lead at the J. Craig Venter Institute. “We have been looking for a fully supported open source platform that facilitates our focus on new tools and algorithms and better serves the research community. In testing BioDT, we found that it represents a true advance in this area, providing accelerated workflow execution speeds and a more intuitive user interface.” 

 

Moreover, Digicon, a large Information Technology service provider, has selected BioDT to be part of its new BioGenLink services. Digicon is a major provider of health-science related IT services to US government agencies such as the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

 

“We needed a solution that would complement our BioGenLink services and provide our customers with a powerful yet easier-to-use analysis tool,” said John Wu, Digicon CEO. “After an exhaustive survey of available options, BioDT was the obvious choice.”

 

BioDT is built on top of Red Hat Enterprise® Linux and Red Hat JBOSS Enterprise Application Platform. Similarly, much of BioDT’s accelerated analysis speed can be attributed to its use of Cloudera’s Big Data Platform and the Impala module. By combining these leading, commercial-grade, open source software technologies, BioDatomics is pioneering the use of these modules in Big Data life sciences applications. 

 

“As NGS becomes more ubiquitous in research, it’s just as important that processing power and analysis tools keep up with—and even anticipate the needs of—the researcher,” said BioDatomics CEO and Founder, Maxim Mikheev M.D., Ph.D. “With the support of our partners, we have created a next generation bioinformatics analysis platform, with which we hope to accelerate insights, advance research and reduce development costs.”

 

Additional key benefits of BioDT include:

•       Access to more than 400 commonly used analysis tools, including the entire Galaxy library

•       Graphic layout engine for customized visualization

•       Comprehensive genome browsing tools

•       Full integration with R, Bioconductor, MATLAB and Galaxy

•       mRNA, Chip, Exome and whole genome sequencing

•       Compatibility with every available NGS hardware platform 

•       Pathway, microarray and statistical analysis and visualization

 

BioDT is available in Community, Pro (site and seat licenses) and SaaS versions.