Case Study: ESAC, Inc. achieves rapid, secure transfer of large proteomic datasets with Aspera

Advancing Cancer Research With Fast Transfer of Large Proteomic Data

ESAC, Inc., a research data management and bioinformatics firm, was contracted by the National Cancer Institute to build a Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Data Coordinating Center with separate private and public data portals. The company faced a major challenge: mass spectrometry proteomics produces very large, rapidly accumulating files that were slow, costly, and occasionally unreliable to share via physical drives or legacy tools, so ESAC needed a fast, secure, and integrable transfer solution.

ESAC integrated Aspera Connect Server (with Aspera’s SDK) directly into the portals to enable high‑speed, secure uploads and downloads—private two‑way transfers for consortium members and read‑only public access for the wider community. The result: delivery times dropped from days to hours or minutes, program costs fell by eliminating global hard‑drive shipments and allowing unlimited free browser clients, and transfers gained strong encryption, integrity verification, and monitoring—one Aspera server now supports both portal use cases and a seamless end‑user experience.

ESAC, Inc.

Karen A. Ketchum

Director, ESAC, Inc