S P E C I A L I S T I N S I G H T

With a dedicated team of bioinformatics scientists , consultants and clinicians , Novo Genomics leverages cutting-edge next-generation sequencing ( NGS ) techniques to further its research . The organisation is also active in the field of agrigenomics analysing the whole genomes of crops and livestock to help enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability .

Since the late 2000s , NGS technologies have dramatically reduced the cost and time of DNA sequencing . Advances in high-performance computing ( HPC ) technology mean that it is now possible to perform genomics sequencing for entire populations . However , managing the massive volume and velocity of data – which ranges from 10 to 300 GB per sample – still presents tough technical challenges .

Researchers must filter the raw data multiple times to make it usable for downstream clinical analysis – a demanding and resource-intensive process .

Abdulrahman Alasiri , Biomedical Informatics Director at Novo Genomics , explains : " Our ultimate goal is to be able to offer every citizen in the Kingdom access to personalised medical treatments based on their genes .

“ In the past , there was no facility in the country that could perform genomics analysis on this scale . As a lean start-up , our objective was to deploy an HPC infrastructure that would enable us to bring the latest sequencing techniques to Saudi Arabia for the first time .

“ After a thorough market evaluation , we determined that Lenovo GOAST was the ideal fit for our needs .

By choosing a ready-made PC solution that ' s specially designed for genomics and bioinformatics , we avoided the significant cost and complexity of designing and building our own cluster ."

The Novo Genomics team ' s solution research led them to Lenovo GOAST . Based on an Intel Select Solution , Lenovo GOAST is a cost-effective , open source , CPU-based solution including active and archive storage , designed to accelerate genomics analysis and enable personalised medicine at a population scale .

" As soon as we started exploring Lenovo GOAST , we were very impressed . The solution offers the perfect combination of server and storage hardware , software and system tuning to run demanding NGS workloads ," recalls Alasiri . " The bioinformatics pipeline in Lenovo GOAST has been carefully optimised , which means it significantly improves performance on whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing compared to a typical HPC architecture ."

Working with HPC experts from Lenovo , Novo Genomics deployed two GOAST nodes at its on-premises data centre in Riyadh . Each node is based on a Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 V2 server powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors , connected to a low-latency Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5100F Unified Flash Storage Array for hot-tier storage and a Lenovo ThinkSystem DM3000H Unified Hybrid Storage Array for archiving . Both nodes run in an active / active configuration , helping to ensure that genomics workloads will continue to run even if one node experiences an outage .

" One of the biggest advantages of GOAST is that we can use smooth , automated workflows to analyse multiple samples in significantly improving our genomics processing capacity ," said Alasiri .

Using the Lenovo GOAST architecture , Novo Genomics can rapidly sequence and analyse genomics data at true population scale , supporting the organisation ' s public health goals for the Kingdom .

" If we ' d selected one of the other solutions we ' d considered , we ' d have needed to process samples one by one ," explains Alasiri . " With Lenovo GOAST , we can process a batch of 32 exomes in parallel in as little as three hours , delivering up to 27 times faster analysis . In fact , the Lenovo and Intel solution allows us to analyse an entire human genome in less than an hour , accelerating our cutting-edge research .

" Managing the solution has been really straightforward . Lenovo helps us stay up-to-date with the latest updates for our bioinformatics tools , and we ' ve not experienced any issues with the platform ."

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