Case Study: ISB accelerates cancer research with Google Cloud Platform

Cancer investigators use Google Compute Engine to accelerate life-saving research

ISB, the nonprofit Institute for Systems Biology, was struggling to analyze massive, complex cancer datasets for The Cancer Genome Atlas project, with studies taking hours, days, or even weeks on its internal computing infrastructure. The organization needed a faster cloud-based way to process genomic and clinical data so researchers could explore more hypotheses and accelerate cancer research using Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Platform implemented Compute Engine, with support from its Computational Discovery team, to run ISB’s analyses on scalable virtual machines. The results were dramatic: one cancer dataset was analyzed in two hours instead of 15 hours on ISB’s internal system, without the need to buy additional hardware. Google Cloud Platform’s open-standards approach also helped researchers work more flexibly and efficiently, with the potential to improve insights into cancer progression and treatment response.

ISB

Ilya Shmulevich

Professor