Accelerate: Genomics Research - The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Relies on Scalable, HighPerformance Storage from DDN® to Reduce Global Health Burden

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a genomic research center, was facing challenges in managing the surge in data volume and computational analysis due to major sequencing technology advancements. The institute's diverse research community, encompassing over 2,000 scientists worldwide, required a robust IT infrastructure with large-scale, high-throughput performance. The unpredictable data growth made it difficult to scale storage sufficiently without overburdening the Institute’s existing 10-GigE network infrastructure or encroaching beyond its one petabyte per floor tile rule in the space-constrained data center. The institute developed a classic “Big Data” problem that was further exacerbated whenever new advances in sequencer technology produced more sequencing data faster than ever before.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a charitably funded genomic research center located in the United Kingdom. It is a world leader in studying the impact of genetics and genomics on global health. Since its inception in 1993, Sanger Institute has developed new understanding of genomes and their role in biology while delivering some of the most important advances in genomic research. The organization played a pivotal role in the Human Genome Project (HGP), an international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. Sanger Institute also led the research on the fi rst human chromosome and ultimately contributed one-third of the human genome to help the project reach its goals by April 2003. Over the years, the Institute’s work has led to other major contributions that have helped reduce the global health burden and lay the foundation for new diagnostics and therapeutics.