Canadian Genomics Cloud launched to provide widespread access to genomics infrastructure for Canada
A national consortium of industry and academic collaborators announced today the launch of the Canadian Genomics Cloud (), an integrated software platform to manage, analyze, and share genome sequence and clinical data. This public cloud computing platform, the first of its kind in Canada, promises to give every scientist in the country unfettered access to award-winning technology empowering precision medicine and other applications in genome research.
The Canadian Genomics Cloud delivers key functionalities for genome science on the cloud, a computing paradigm that uses storage and processing resources of remote data centres that can be accessed securely over the internet. Cloud computing frees its users of substantial costs, inefficiencies, and burdens associated with maintaining hard infrastructure on-premises while providing on-demand access to massive compute capacity and a wide range of managed services.
聽鈥淓xponential growth in genome sequencing is generating unprecedented volumes of data that demand cloud computing to manage and mine,鈥� said Dr. Marc Fiume, CEO of Toronto-based DNAstack, whose team led the development of the platform to align with global standards it helped write as part of a large worldwide consortium called the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). 鈥淲ith this launch we are ushering into Canada the latest technologies and standards to catalyze research and service faster than ever before.鈥� The Canadian Genomics Cloud provides on-demand access to popular data analysis workflows like the Broad Institute鈥檚 GATK4, Verily鈥檚 Deep Variant, and Sentieon鈥檚 DNAseq. It supports machine learning through Google鈥檚 TensorFlow and secure data sharing through GA4GH Beacon and Matchmaker.
The Canadian Genomics Cloud is being developed to support CGEn, a Canadian national network of genome sequencing centres in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. 鈥淲e are performing whole genome sequencing on thousands of research samples across Canada and our needs to manage this big data for the community grow every day,鈥� said Dr. Stephen Scherer, a leader of CGEn and Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Scherer is also the Director of the recently published Personal Genomes Project Canada (), an initiative powered by the Canadian Genomics Cloud that is building a comprehensive online public data resource that combines participants鈥� genome sequence data with their health information.
The platform will also be used to support SickKids Cancer Sequencing (KiCS,聽), a pediatric cancer genome sequencing program led by Drs. Adam Shlien and David Malkin, from The Hospital for Sick Children. 鈥淓arly cancer events mark the genome with unique mutational fingerprints that can give clues to a clinical treatment plan once identified. The Canadian Genomics Cloud provides the computing capacity needed for us to train machine learning models to extract signatures from genome sequence data from tumours of children with cancer.鈥�
The Canadian Genomics Cloud is designed to support national initiatives, which call for the co-ordinated sequencing, sharing, and analysis of genomes collected from tens of thousands of individuals from across the country. 鈥淪haring of genomic and health-related data for biomedical research is of key importance to ensure continued progress in our understanding of human health and wellbeing,鈥� said Dr. Bartha Knoppers, health-policy expert at 缅北强奸 and Director of CGP.聽
鈥淭he Global Alliance for Genomics and Health strives to make responsible, international data sharing a straightforward endeavor through a suite of technical standards and policy frameworks. It's great to see the fruits of this mission put to practice through platforms like the Canadian Genomics Cloud,鈥� said Peter Goodhand, CEO of GA4GH.
The Canadian Genomics Cloud lays the foundation for an ecosystem of technical integrations that will allow data to flow securely and efficiently between systems, breaking through traditional data silos and helping to maximize the value of genomics and health data collected institutionally, regionally, and across the country. The Canadian Genomics Cloud is deployed on Google鈥檚 new cloud computing facility in Montreal, which opened earlier this month, and will soon allow federated sharing and analysis of data between multiple cloud providers including Microsoft Azure and Canada鈥檚 leading clinical record vendor.
The Canadian Genomics Cloud is publicly accessible at聽. Contact聽info [at] genomicscloud.ca聽for more information.
