By investigating genetic abnormalities in childhood cancer genomes, scientists can gain a better understanding of tumor development or progression. This could help personalize patient care, thereby raising survival chances and improving quality of life. Google Cloud technology provides scalability, speed, data security and a unique state-of-the-art analysis framework that can assist researchers at the Princess Máxima Center in their efforts to uncover mutations related to childhood cancer. The two-year project, starting in October this year, has three research aims:
- Detecting complex mutations and interpret its impact on tumor development
- Mapping mutations in non-coding DNA - which has been a black box thus far - and its impact on nearby coding DNA
- Providing a secure source of childhood cancer genomics data that is reusable for other researchers
Accelerating research
'Via the cloud we can perform large-scale re-analysis with more genome data and at a higher speed. Where an analysis on a local compute cluster could take about six months, using the cloud we could do it in a few weeks,' Kemmeren says. 'It can also stimulate collaboration among researchers: by having lots of standardized data available in the cloud, we can more easily give access to data to collaborators in a secure, controlled way for them to perform their analyses. As childhood cancers are rare, having access to this type of data is essential to accelerate research and eventually develop targeted therapies.'
Implementation
Google Cloud integrator Sparkle, in close collaboration with Google Cloud partner Omnigen, will help implement the platform over the next two years. The project was awarded to Sparkle within the European tender of the Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) project and has been endowed with a grant of close to half a million euros to make this transition possible.
Paul van Dijk, Tech Lead Research IT at the Princess Máxima Center, says: 'Through this project we hope to lay the foundation for a well-designed Google Cloud environment for research in the Princess Máxima Center. This fits perfectly with the OCRE grant: to ease Cloud adoption at the level of the individual researcher as well as at an institutional level.'
'We are very proud to participate with our partners in this project putting digital technologies at the service of scientific research,' says Maria Teresa Ferrigno, EVP Enterprise at Sparkle. 'With this project we confirm our commitment, through the OCRE Cloud Framework, to offer the best cloud solutions to the European education and research sector by reducing the cost and complexity of the transition to the cloud.'
Berry Kriesels, CEO and founder of Omnigen, says: 'In a project such as this, we have the opportunity to demonstrate in-depth and at full scale the added societal value of cloud computing for scientific research and the aid it can have in understanding hard-to-solve challenges such as pediatric oncology.'
'We are proud that Google Cloud technology, best practices and expertise will contribute to the adoption and effectiveness of cloud services in research. By supporting the Princess Máxima Center, we will play a role in the creation of Comprehensive Childhood Cancer Commons and help drive innovations in childhood cancer research, diagnostics and treatment,' says Erwin Angelier, Head of Public Sector, Netherlands, Google Cloud.