The new supercomputer will accelerate precision medicine and genomics solutions for a range of complex diseases.
Mount Sinai Health System has received a $2 million grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services to develop a precision medicine and genomics supercomputer.
The second “big omics data engine” (BODE 2) will enable Mount Sinai researchers to explore complex scientific questions more quickly and accelerate new solutions for a wide range of medical disorders.
“Supercomputers have become essential in biomedical scientific discovery, and Mount Sinai has been a leader on this front, making investments in computational and data science that are advancing our understanding of and ability to treat complex diseases,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System.
“With BODE 2, we are renewing our commitment to push the boundaries of scientific research, tackle questions that we did not previously have the computational power to take on, and achieve breakthroughs that transform clinical care worldwide.”
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The new supercomputer will launch at the end of the year, replacing BODE, a previous supercomputer used by 61 basic and translational researchers at Mount Sinai representing more than $100 million in NIH funding, in addition to their collaborators at 75 external institutions.
“BODE has proven to be a vital tool for groundbreaking research across a broad range of fields, but as Mount Sinai’s faculty continues to grow, there is concurrent growth in research initiatives, necessitating investment in a new supercomputer that has sufficient computational throughput and storage space to support this activity,” said Patricia Kovatch, Senior Associate Dean for Scientific Computing and Data Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, member of the Icahn Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology, and Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Pharmacological Sciences.
With the BODE 2 supercomputer, researchers will have broad, integrated, user-friendly access to diverse data sources with secure information flow between research and point-of-care programs. BODE 2 is also expected to facilitate the application of bioinformatics research in healthcare and enable data-drive medicine.
“Based on our experiences with BODE, BODE 2 is designed to provide our researchers and clinicians, and their external partners in Mount Sinai-led national research projects, with the necessary infrastructure to achieve faster results for greater scientific throughput, increased fidelity in their simulations and analysis, and seamless migration of research applications to the software environment for enhanced scientific productivity,” Kovatch said.
“Computing capability of this size and speed is not available widely, and Mount Sinai’s investment in building this infrastructure will translate into more robust genetics and population analysis, gene expression, machine learning, and structural and chemical biology investigations, and result in new insights and advances in a wide range of diseases including Alzheimer’s, autism, influenza, prostate cancer, schizophrenia, and substance use disorders.”
BODE 2 will facilitate several research projects at Mount Sinai, including a study that will enhance current treatments and explore new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.
The supercomputer will provide the necessary storage for whole-genome sequencing datasets from more than 10,000 study subjects, as well as the processing power to analyze the data with machine learning techniques.
BODE 2 will also facilitate research on the underlying causes of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders. The supercomputer will provide the storage necessary for the whole-genome sequencing data, other omics, and molecular, behavioral, imaging, environmental, and clinical data for the project.
“This new supercomputer will enable us to mine deep databases of genomic and clinical information using machine-learning approaches to propel the personalized medicine of today into better medicine tomorrow,” said Eimear Kenny, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine), and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director of the Center for Genomic Health, and a Principal Investigator of the TOPMed Program.
“The technology will help fuel innovative research programs to further our understanding of disease progression and management.”
Source: Health IT Analytics
