Dive Brief:
- As the amount of DNA-based data grows, researchers and healthcare companies are making a choice between two tech behemoths—Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services, Reuters reports.
- The goal for universities and pharma companies is to store human genomic data that has been sequenced and is being housed for various reserach and therapeutic purposes.
- In addition to offering cloud-computing services to their clients, Google and Amazon are adding value to their storage services by also offering analytical functions via user-friendly, yet secure, platforms, according to the companies.
Dive Insight:
Two companies relying on Amazon's cloud computing services are Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Geisinger Health Services. These companies are partered with the goal of sequencing 250,000 genomes.
Beyond simply storing raw data in its mega-database, Amazon's platform also provides a service via DNAnexus, which assembles millions of chunks of raw data into 3-billion-letter long genomes. The ultimate goal is to compare uploaded genomic data with a reference human genome, as part of the process of identifying new drug targets.
The financial stakes in this competition between the two database-cloud-computing titans is growing alongside the genomics market. While the current market for cloud genomics storage is estimated to be between $100 million and $300 million, experts from FBR Capital predict that by 2018, the toal market will be worth $1 billion.