NuTec Sciences Life Sciences Division unveiled fastest commercial life sciences supercomputer in the worldAtlanta 05 June 2001 At bioinformatic's company NuTec Atlanta headquarters a 5,000 processor IBM eSever has been unveiled. Peak of the machine is 7.5 Tflop/s. NuTEC claims it is the fastes commercial super in the world. The NuTec Life Sciences supercomputing center will provide the technology platform to accelerate medical and academic research in disease management, treatment and drug discovery.
IBM disk storage systems and
software for Web application serving, information portals, data management and
data integration augment the system. This computational power is harnessed
through NuTec-developed bioinformatic software programming to manage, mine and
integrate genetic data from a wide variety of sources. This information can then
be shared via the Internet with doctors and researchers around the globe to
further speed diagnosis and the evolution of new treatments.
NuTec Life Sciences is leasing time on the massively parallel supercomputing
system to medical research and academic institutions, biotechnology companies
and premier healthcare centers involved in studying the gene combinations behind
complex and often fatal diseases like diabetes, heart conditions and strokes, as
well as prostate and breast cancers. Clients also will have access to NuTec Life
Sciences' range of software applications, including search and analysis tools
for gene expression and proteomics, in addition to database management and
visualization tools for the integration of clinical and genetic data.
NuTec has also collaborated with the National Human Genome Research Institute
(NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to use the
supercomputer to distribute advanced mathematical calculations, or algorithms,
for analyzing disease-causing gene combinations. These NIH-patented algorithms
can help researchers enroll the right patients in clinical trials and predict
outcomes, enabling drug discovery and targeted therapies to be developed in less
time and at a lower cost.
"With an estimated 35,000 genes in the human genome, we realized we needed an
extraordinarily robust computing environment to help pinpoint the four- or
five-gene combination that may be a factor in a particular disease," said Dr.
Anthony J. Shuker, president of NuTec Sciences Life Sciences Division. "This
powerful tool will allow researchers to process vast amounts of genomic data in
record time, and will greatly speed up the development of new life-saving
treatments."
NuTec Sciences is part of the Georgia Research Alliance initiative to attract
biotech companies to the state. Emory's Winship Cancer Institute, NuTec's first
Atlanta-based client and a leader in cancer patient care and research, uses
supercomputing solutions to pinpoint genes and gene combinations that cause
cancer in individual patients, as well as highlight genetic risk factors that
would suggest the need for early cancer screening.
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