Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced a significant expansion of Amazon Omics at the annual AWS Life Sciences Executive Symposium in Boston. Amazon Omics, which the company introduced last year, helps life science organizations to store, query and analyze genomic, transcriptomic and other omics data.
Other similar tools include Qlucore Omics Explorer, Genospace, StrandOmics, Signals Translational and the publicly-funded academic-developed platform Galaxy.
Omics data encompass genomics, transcriptomics and other related fields, providing a comprehensive understanding of the genetic, transcriptional and functional elements of biological systems. Such data, instrumental for researchers studying biological systems, plays a vital role in modern drug discovery and development.
Amazon Omics introduces Ready2Run workflows
AWS aims to distinguish Amazon Omics in the marketplace through its comprehensive managed service approach and unique features such as Ready2Run workflows. The company says these pre-built pre-configured workflows streamline data analysis. They are sourced from third-party software providers such as Sentieon and NVIDIA and open-source pipelines.
Ready2Run workflows are flexible, supporting everything from converting base calls into FASTQ files to performing secondary analyses like gene expression or variant calling. They can also help conduct tertiary analyses such as predicting protein structures. In addition, Ready2Run workflows require minimal user input and are priced on a per-run basis.
Amazon Omics also supports NVIDIA Parabricks Ready2Run workflows, which are a suite of accelerated genomic analysis applications. These workflows, including GPU-accelerated GATK and DeepVariant, are designed to handle large volumes of sequencing data from whole genome sequencing. Additionally, they are faster than CPU-based tools.
Among the customers leveraging the new capabilities of Amazon Omics are Kite Pharma, a subsidiary of Gilead Sciences known for its work in cancer immunotherapy; Columbia University Medical Center, which focuses on medical research and education and FYR Diagnostics, which develops diagnostics for various diseases. In particular, these organizations are using Amazon Omics Ready2Run workflows to analyze single-cell RNA sequencing data, a complex task that can provide valuable insights into individual cell behaviors and disease mechanisms.
A competitive landscape
While Amazon Omics continues to expand its service offering, the company operates in a competitive landscape with similar offerings like Microsoft Genomics and Microsoft Immunomics on the Azure cloud.
Amazon Omics aims to stand out from the pack through its genomics analysis tools with its unique features. It supports Workflow Description Language (WDL) and Nextflow workflow languages, both of which are common in the bioinformatics community to define and run complex computational pipelines. Such pipelines are important for analyzing omics data, which often involves multiple data processing steps and dependencies.
In addition, Amazon Omics has an analytic store that can handle both genomic variants and annotations. The former refers to differences in the DNA sequence among individuals, while annotations provide additional information about such variants, including their potential effects on genes and proteins. The ability to handle data types facilitates genomic analyses.
The Amazon Omics platform relies on data centers in the U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Singapore) regions.
In its recent announcement, the company also touted GPU support in Omics workflows, direct upload to Omics Storage, automatic variant data parsing and Amazon EventBridge integration.
For drug developers, such features could potentially accelerate drug discovery and development. For instance, Amazon Omics Ready2Run workflows could streamline the process of data analysis, while the integration with Amazon EventBridge could help to streamline the process of drug testing and approval.
The introduction of Ready2Run workflows, GPU support in Omics workflows, direct upload to Omics Storage, automatic variant data parsing and Amazon EventBridge integration could potentially scale research and accelerate scientific discovery in healthcare and life sciences organizations.