At the same time, Google said it joined the Global Alliance for
Genomics and Health, an international effort aimed at developing common
approaches for responsible, secure, and effective sharing of genomic and
clinical information in the cloud with the research and healthcare
communities.
The internet search and services giant is one of 146 top technology,
healthcare, research, and disease advocacy organizations worldwide in
the global alliance, which vowed that its harmonized standards will meet
the highest standards of ethics and privacy.
Established last year, the alliance has drawn numerous research
institutions, five of which were named interim host institutions: the
Broad Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Ontario Institute
for Cancer Research, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute / European
Bioinformatics Institute.
The alliance has also drawn members that include drug developers
(Amgen, Biogen Idec, and Merck & Co.), sequencing giants
(BGI-Shenzhen and Illumina), and cloud-based genomic analysis firm
DNAnexus – which in January said it closed on a $15 million Series C
financing round co-led by Google Ventures.
Google Ventures has also invested in direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company
23andMe. And in September, Google extended its healthcare presence by
launching Calico,
a new company focused on developing technologies to fight aging and
associated diseases. Calico is led by Arthur Levinson, the chairman of
Roche’s
Genentech
subsidiary and former CEO before the company got bought, as well as
chairman of Apple and former director of Google. Not all Google
initiatives in healthcare have been successful. In 2011, the company
shut down an electronic health records effort with the same goal as
Calico, but which failed to catch on.
To launch Google Genomics, Google has previewed its implementation of
the API built on its cloud infrastructure, including sample data from
public datasets like the 1,000 Genomes Project, and made public a
collection of in-progress open-source sample projects built around the
common API.
In unveiling the API as a limited release for discussion by the
research community, Google cautioned that not all of the interface’s
functionality had been implemented yet, and that the company’s focus to
date in launching Google Genomics had been the shape of the API more
than its performance.
But Google also laid out what it sees as the benefits of its API to
prospective users: It allows users to focus on science rather than tech
details such as servers and file formats; store genomic data securely so
that private data remains private, while public data is available to
the community anywhere; and process as much data as they need, all at
once. For example, the API would let users import data for entire
cohorts in parallel, as well as search and slice data from many samples
in a single query.
“With these first steps, it is our goal to support the global
research community in bringing the vision of the Global Alliance for
Genomics and Health to fruition,” Jonathan Bingham, product manager with
Google, said in a post on the company’s research blog. “Imagine the
impact if researchers everywhere had larger sample sizes to distinguish
between people who become sick and those who remain healthy, between
patients who respond to treatment and those whose condition worsens,
between pathogens that cause outbreaks and those that are harmless.
Imagine if they could test biological hypotheses in seconds instead of
days, without owning a supercomputer.”
The blog post included a link allowing would-be users to request
access to the API for their research, and requesting that they tell
about themselves and their research interests: “We will let you know
when we’re ready to work with more partners.”
“Together with the members of the Global Alliance for Genomics and
Health, we believe we are at the beginning of a transformation in
medicine and basic research, driven by advances in genome sequencing and
huge-scale computing,” Bingham added.
(Source)
Articles
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire