Category: News

DNAstack announces the launch of Instruments, a new feature that streamlines genomic data analysis in the cloud through direct integration with sequencing instruments. Revealed at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting in Denver, Instruments makes it easier and faster for scientists to go from sequences to solves.

The Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative has collaborated with DNAstack, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Verily, and DataTecnica to launch the ASAP Collaborative Research Network Cloud. This platform, powered by DNAstack’s Omics AI, serves to unite data analysis efforts across the global research community and accelerate the path for a cure to Parkinson’s.

As AI evolves to deliver more powerful experiences by learning from our data, it is important to implement safeguards that ensure we are protecting personal privacy. By building AI with strict requirements around the protection of personal privacy, we can develop new technologies in a safe, ethical, and responsible way for the benefit of society.

Autism Speaks’ MSSNG database, the world’s largest autism whole-genome dataset powered by DNAstack software, recently expanded to include an additional 2,489 fully sequenced genomes in the project’s cloud-based dataset. Genomic data is now available for 13,801 individuals, including over 6,000 autistic people and over 7,000 of their family members.

Target ALS, a nonprofit organization that breaks down barriers to accelerate research for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), has added a Natural History Study Collection to their recently launched data platform powered by Omics AI. The platform provides no-strings-attached access to comprehensive datasets and analysis tools to fuel discovery of treatments and biomarkers for ALS.

DNAstack is proud to announce its Bronze sponsorship with the Vector Institute, a globally-renowned AI Institute that empowers researchers, businesses and governments, to develop and adopt AI responsibly. This union between industry and academia will serve to amplify the shared goal of accelerating AI-based innovation in Canada.

Target ALS, a nonprofit organization that breaks down barriers to accelerate research for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), has launched a first-of-its-kind data portal to provide no-strings-attached access to comprehensive datasets and analysis tools to fuel discovery of treatments and biomarkers for ALS.

Today, we’re excited to announce a new ISO standard, Requirements for interoperable systems for genomic surveillance.Genomic surveillance combined with rapid realtime data sharing is the most important tool we have for detecting and stopping the spread of infectious diseases, like COVID.

Workflows makes it easier and safer for scientists to discover and run trusted, high-quality, reproducible computational pipelines for analyzing omics data. The marketplace includes a curated collection of best practices pipelines for processing data from popular sequencing instrument manufacturers, including PacBio, Illumina, and Oxford Nanopore. Workflows integrates with Workbench, a workflow execution manager by DNAstack, unifying the experience of performing omics data analyses across multiple sequencing instruments and cloud computing platforms.

Toronto, Ontario — DNAstack today launched Omics AI, a revolutionary new software suite for omics and health research.

Omics AI makes scientific discoveries faster and more powerful by enabling insights across federated networks of data, in compliance with open standards by the Global Alliance for Genomics & Health (GA4GH). The system is being used by world leading pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, universities, patient advocacy groups, funders, sequencing facilities, government agencies, and consortiums to grow collaborative networks in diverse areas of research.

DNAstack CEO Marc Fiume accepts the LSO Company of the Year Award, introduced by Dr. Catalina Lopez-Correa, CSO at Genome Canada.

Neuroscience AI will enable researchers to make discoveries from larger and more diverse datasets than ever before.

Toronto, Ontario — DNAstack and partners today launched Neuroscience AI, a new federated platform for collaborative neuroscience research. By enabling privacy-preserving AI-powered insights across distributed networks of data, Neuroscience AI will enable researchers to make discoveries from larger and more diverse datasets than ever before. The platform is being used to advance collaborative research in autism by connecting global members of the Autism Sharing Initiative.

The new project will help expand federated, AI-powered insights across distributed networks of genomics and health data. 

Toronto, Ontario — Today, a Canadian consortium led by DNAstack is announcing the launch of a new project to expand the development of a software platform to enable federated, AI-powered insights across networks of genomics and health data. The Canadian Platform for Genomics & Precision Health (CP4GPH) is a $14.5M initiative co-funded by Digital that brings together domain experts with a shared vision to deliver better outcomes for Canadians by making it easier to connect and analyze exponentially growing volumes of distributed genomics and health data. The project builds upon the multi-award-winning software platform developed by its partners as part of previous collaborations.

Award recognizes Toronto company’s global impact on genomics and health research.Toronto, Ontario — Today DNAstack was named 2023 Company of the Year by Life Sciences Ontario (LSO). The award celebrates DNAstack’s breakthrough software platform, which enables AI-powered insights across distributed genomics and health data. The platform is being used to support global pandemic surveillance and to advance better outcomes in neuroscience, oncology, and rare disease. The LSO Company of the Year award is given to an outstanding Ontario-based company that has demonstrated strong leadership in advancing innovative technology in the life sciences.

DNAstack drives medical breakthroughs with its federated data discovery and analysis platform built on open standards.  The company was selected for establishing federated data networks and powering insights in pandemic surveillance, neuroscience, rare disease, and oncology.

DNAstack today announced Viral AI, a federated network for genomic variant surveillance and infectious disease research. Viral AI was designed to deliver equitable access to software infrastructure, accelerate international data sharing, and empower scientists and public health officials with globally representative datasets they need to mitigate current and future infectious disease outbreaks.

Our world is constantly changing and at its core, innovation is really about responding to change in a new, creative way. It requires courage, conviction, resilience, the support of a community of collaborators, and innovation-oriented policies in order to succeed.Digital technologies are driving much of this change, rapidly outpacing our traditional systems and infrastructure. It’s more important than ever that we bolster innovation to foster effective and sustainable health care, as well as economic growth.

Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster and DNAstack today announced the Autism Sharing Initiative, a new project to build the first federated, global network for sharing genomics and clinical data to accelerate research with the hopes of developing precision healthcare approaches for autistic individuals.

A national consortium led by DNAstack will expand development of a software platform for genomics and health data and apply it to COVID-19.

Despite advances in sequencing and analysis tools, calling variants in whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data is not trivial, even when dealing with only a few dozen samples. When the number of samples reaches into the thousands, the time, computational resources, and file storage required for analysis can quickly become overwhelming. This was the challenge faced by […]

Today, DNAstack revealed a software system built on standards developed by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) to enable federated analysis of genomics and related health data.

The system, demonstrated at the 8th Plenary Meeting of GA4GH earlier this week, features the first integration of multiple emerging standards for data access, discovery, and cloud computing, which are foundational for connecting secure, scalable, and distributed data sharing networks.

DNAstack is helping scientists around the globe better understand COVID-19, so they can develop treatments and vaccines.

To combat the current COVID-19 pandemic, scientists around the world are sequencing viral genomes at an accelerated pace.

These sequences are then being deposited into a number of international databases, including the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; Figure 1). There are limitations to this approach as multiple databases makes it challenging for a single researcher on their own to consolidate data from different sources. These data were generated and processed by different research groups at different institutions resulting in batch effects when amalgamated — differences in signal across groups of viral genomes processed together that represent technical noise and not biological variation.  The distributed nature of the data and the lack of uniformity in data generation and processing hinders the pace of scientific discovery. To accelerate discovery, we need to leverage the breadth of data available internationally which requires data consolidation from multiple sources and data “cleaning” to reduce technical artifacts introduced during data processing.

DNAstack today announced COVID Cloud, an online destination for exploring one of the largest collections of viral genome sequences in the world. 

As the global caseload of COVID-19 exceeds 16.5 million people in over 200 countries, scientists are racing to study the genetics of the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, to inform the development of urgently needed diagnostics and treatments. COVID Cloud is a software solution created by DNAstack that connects and shares a large and growing number of viral genomes seen around the world combined with visualization and analytical tools for scientists to examine the molecular machinery of the virus as it continues to spread and evolve.

DNAstack’s bioinformatician Heather Ward breaks down the biology of the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak.

DNAstack today announced the launch of Clinical Evidence Beacons on the Beacon Network, a real-time search engine for finding genetic mutations across a global network of genomic datasets.These additions will enable medical laboratories to crowdsource the interpretation of variants through a secure social network.Accurately interpreting DNA variants identified through genetic testing is essential for patients […]

DNAstack today announced its participation in a new project to accelerate the development of a national software platform for precision health in Canada.

DNAstack, a cloud genomics company, today is announcing a partnership with Sentieon, an award-winning bioinformatics software company. 

We fundamentally believe that democratization of genomics information through sharing will massively accelerate discoveries that will lead to better treatments and outcomes for patients affected by genetic diseases. 

We can avoid long diagnostic odyssies by connecting patients’ data into networks that leverage — in realtime — large and exponentially growing volumes of information. This is the inspiration behind our work on the Beacon Project for the Global Alliance for Genomics & Health, where we are defining industry standards for sharing genomic variants.

Today, DNAstack announced the launch of a major update to its cloud-based genomics software platform. 

The update contains many new features, including a revolutionary application called Workflows that makes it easier and more affordable than ever for genome scientists to find, develop, share, and run bioinformatics workflows at scale. The app brings the most advanced technologies and standards for bioinformatics to market and positions DNAstack as a commercial leader in cloud genomics.