Case Study: DNAstack achieves industrial-scale genomic processing and 4-second query turnaround with Google Cloud Platform (Google Genomics)

DNAstack tackles massive, complex DNA datasets with Google Genomics

DNAstack is a Toronto-based startup (founded 2014) that builds tools to help scientists securely store, organize, and interpret genomic data. The company needed to eliminate the friction of multi-expert workflows and scale its platform from the hundreds of millions of variants to billions, but its custom solution stalled in performance beyond ~100 million variants and couldn’t support a streamlined “sequencer-to-scientist” pipeline.

By moving to Google Cloud Platform and using Google Genomics (BigQuery and the Genomics API built to GA4GH standards), DNAstack gained industrial-strength scalability and interoperability. Complex genomic queries now return in about four seconds versus tens of seconds or minutes before, the team built a genome browser in a day, and engineers can focus on apps and discovery rather than maintaining in‑house pipelines.

DNAstack

Marc Fiume

CEO and Co-founder