University of Oxford and Oracle aiding researchers identify COVID-19 variants faster

The University of Oxford and Oracle Cloud System is aiding researchers in identifying COVID-19 variants more quickly. The rapid spread of the highly infectious Delta variant highlights the necessity for COVID-19 mutations to be identified sooner rather than later. The University of Oxford and Oracle’s Global Pathogen Analysis System (GPAS) is currently being used by organizations on practically every continent, uniting governments and medical communities in this endeavor. The University of Montreal Hospital Centre Research Centre, the Chilean Institute of Public Health Research, the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research – New South Wales Pathology, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies are among the organizations that use the platform. The Public Health England New Variant Assessment Platform now includes GPAS.

To tackle COVID-19 and other microbial health risks, the Global Pathogen Analysis System is being made available as a free resource. Visit www.gpas.cloud to join the programme and learn more.

The Global Pathogen Analysis Approach is a cloud platform that uses Oxford’s Scalable Pathogen Pipeline Platform (SP3), Oracle APEX, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to create a uniform, standardised system for analysing and comparing the annotated genomic sequence data of SARS-CoV-2. The system allows researchers to upload pathogen data and receive detailed results in minutes. The results may be shared in a secure environment with participating laboratories throughout the world with the agreement of the user. By making this data more understandable and shared, public health officials will better evaluate and plan their response by gaining vital insight into new variations even before they are officially designated as Variants of Concern.

Uniting the global research community in a common mission

“GPAS is the first industry standards-based service anywhere in the world, offering a standardized sequence data analysis service for users on the cloud,” said Derrick Crook, professor of microbiology at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine.

Further explained, “Users will be able to access, upload and process their sequence data fully under their sovereign control and receive back fully analyzed data in as little as 20 minutes of successful upload. If they select to share data, they will contribute to electronic dashboard visualizations of global data revealing the daily changes in how the pandemic progresses and how the virus is changing. This will enable continuous assessment of the pandemic and help guide national and global interventions to curb the impact of the virus.”

“COVID-19 is a global fight, yet researchers have lacked the technical infrastructure to process raw sequences quickly, securely and share those results worldwide,” said Oracle Chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison.

“With GPAS, we are bringing the power and security of the cloud to enable any researcher to become part of the solution in any location. The more data that medical institutions, governments, and academics provide, the more quickly we can understand and act to get ahead of the coronavirus,” added Larry Ellison.

Researchers and governments will be able to swiftly obtain the timely, relevant data they need to conduct up-to-date scientific analyses and make better policy and safety judgments on novel variants thanks to the platform. The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine (Ellison Institute) and the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) for Global Change have collaborated with Oxford and Oracle to support the development of the platform and get it into the hands of global researchers as part of their work with the Global Health Security Consortium (GHSC).

 “The world’s lack of preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted our need to work differently in order to identify solutions that are pragmatic and able to scale in the face of challenges,” said Dr. David B. Agus, GHSC Member and CEO, Ellison Institute.

Also noted, “GPAS is a key building block in the global data infrastructure for early warning systems and global surveillance.”

“We know only too well that viruses do not respect borders which is why we must take a global, single-minded approach to contain this pandemic,” said Tony Blair, Executive Chairman of TBI and former UK Prime Minister.

And said, “This platform promises to bring together data much more rapidly, helping us to better understand and get ahead of the patterns of spread faster, so governments can make better policy decisions and mitigate the devastating impact this virus continues to inflict in their own countries and across the globe.”