Edico, DNAnexus Launch $20, 90-minute Whole Genome Analysis

By Allison Proffitt

August 30, 2017 | Edico Genome and DNAnexus, Inc. today announced the availability of Edico Genome’s DRAGEN on Amazon Web Service’s EC2 F1/FPGA instances via DNAnexus. For a limited time, the cost to analyze a whole genome at 35X coverage will be $20 and take about an hour and a half, Pieter van Rooyen said.

About a year ago Edico Genome ported the DRAGEN pipeline to Amazon’s FPGA instances, van Rooyen explained. Today the Edico and DNAnexus partnership makes the DRAGEN pipeline even more accessible.

“If a customer has data on AWS, they can spin up an F1 instance with our solution it right away,” van Rooyen. “It’s basically an app on the DNAnexus platform.”

DNAnexus provides a global network for sharing and managing genomic data and tools to accelerate genomics. The platform is optimized to address the challenges of security, scalability and collaboration for organizations that are pursuing genomic-based approaches to health in the clinic and in the lab.

“DNAnexus is the go-to solution for secondary analysis tool providers who are seeking a secure, compliant global network to distribute, deploy and expand product offerings,” said Richard Daly, chief executive officer of DNAnexus, in a press release announcing the news. “DRAGEN is a critical resource for the genomics community, providing ultra-rapid genomic data analysis, significantly reducing costs and turnaround time, and enhancing accuracy. DNAnexus customers can now leverage this powerful Genome Pipeline in a turnkey solution.”

New and existing DNAnexus customers will have access to the DRAGEN app, though they can choose whether to use it. “First, the cost is significantly reduced using our technology on these F1 instances,” van Rooyen said. “If a customer has a lot of data, they can do it in an extremely cost-effective way. Secondly, they can do it in an extremely short amount of time. It’s the best of both worlds. It’s fast and it’s inexpensive to use... And thirdly,” he added, “it’s really very easy to use within the DNAnexus platform. If a customer is already using DNAnexus, they can use all the projects they’ve opened in the past and very easily reanalyze data using the DRAGEN application.”

The DRAGEN Genome Pipeline is an end-to-end analysis solution that includes advanced algorithms for mapping, aligning, sorting, duplicate marking, variant calling, data compression/decompression and more. Edico bills DRAGEN’s Genome Pipeline as “ultra-rapid”, and speeding up analysis will certainly save compute costs.

The two companies are currently launching a promotion from Aug. 28 to Oct. 31, 2017. Whole genome analysis on the F1 2x instances will cost $20 and take about an hour and a half. In the next few weeks, van Rooyen said, DRAGEN will be available through DNAnexus on the F1 16x instances as well, and would take the 20 minutes or so that users of DRAGEN on site have seen. Whole exome analysis, he adds, will cost about $5 during the promotional period.

There is no volume discount during the promotional period. Analyzing a single genome will cost $20; analyzing hundreds of thousands of genomes will cost $20 each. And van Rooyen assured us that were there to be a run on the service, Amazon has the capacity to handle it.

“If anybody has real volume—if they have hundreds of thousands of genomes—they would spin up a 16x instance and then just rip through their data. There’s enough instances available on AWS to accommodate literally any volume that a customer would require,” he said.

The DRAGEN pipeline has processed 12 petabytes of data so far this year in on site deployments, and van Rooyen expects usage in the cloud to be quite a bit more. “There will definitely be more usage in the cloud going forward; there’s definitely a trend for genomic data to be processed in the cloud,” he said. “Quite honestly I think the right solution is a hybrid solution—both on site and in the cloud. We’ll see what that breakdown will be in a couple of month’s time.”

Editor's Note: We reported in error the price for analysis on the F1 16 instances. That service isn't yet available and the price has not been announced. Changes have been made to the 8th paragraph.