How Clover­tex blends be­spoke and off-the-rack cloud com­put­ing in Phar­ma

How Clover­tex blends be­spoke and off-the-rack cloud com­put­ing in Phar­ma

Cloud tech­nol­o­gy and High-Per­for­mance Com­put­ing (HPC) are swift­ly emerg­ing as es­sen­tial tools for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, find­ing rel­e­vance in both the re­search (dis­cov­ery phase) and the de­vel­op­ment (clin­i­cal phase) process­es. This shift to­wards more com­pu­ta­tion­al re­liance in the cloud is not with­out rea­son.

The im­mense vol­ume of da­ta pro­duced dur­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal re­search, cou­pled with the in­tri­ca­cies of drug dis­cov­ery, ne­ces­si­tates the need for such ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies. Cloud and HPC are vi­tal for prompt­ly an­a­lyz­ing ex­ten­sive datasets, whether from ge­nomics, sys­tems bi­ol­o­gy, cryo-EM, or clin­i­cal tri­als, all of which are cen­tral for ef­fec­tive Phar­ma R&D. It’s in­te­gral to rec­og­nize the sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship here: as the in­tri­ca­cies of sci­en­tif­ic re­search de­mand more ad­vanced com­pu­ta­tion­al so­lu­tions, the bur­geon­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al do­main ris­es to meet these chal­lenges. Based in Boston, Phar­ma cloud com­put­ing so­lu­tion provider Clover­tex rec­og­nizes this dy­nam­ic in­ter­play and stands at the fore­front of this trans­for­ma­tion. Through this ar­ti­cle, we’ll ex­plore how Clover­tex of­fers a har­mo­nious blend of be­spoke and pro­duc­tized cloud com­put­ing so­lu­tions tai­lored for Phar­ma R&D, ad­dress­ing the IT chal­lenges in a spe­cial­ized in­dus­try.

Sym­bi­ot­ic evo­lu­tion of sci­en­tif­ic com­plex­i­ty and com­pu­ta­tion­al ex­pan­sion

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween sci­ence and com­pute is not one-sided. The more sci­ence ex­tends its fron­tiers, the more it leans on its com­pu­ta­tion­al coun­ter­parts. In turn, in­no­va­tion in the com­pu­ta­tion­al do­main dri­ve nov­el sci­ence. The for­mi­da­ble com­bi­na­tion of HPC and evolv­ing al­go­rithms, es­pe­cial­ly in the realms of ma­chine learn­ing and AI, equip re­searchers with the tools to sim­u­late, an­a­lyze, and pre­dict phe­nom­e­na with an un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of pre­ci­sion and speed.

Take, for ex­am­ple, the task of us­ing cryo-EM to de­ter­mine a pro­tein struc­ture. This process in­volves the con­vo­lut­ed pro­cess­ing of mas­sive, Ter­abyte-sized datasets and de­mands sig­nif­i­cant com­pu­ta­tion­al pow­er. Against a back­drop of met­rics such as ‘time-to-struc­ture’, ‘cost-per-struc­ture’, and ‘struc­tures-per-month’, the im­por­tance of rapid and ef­fi­cient com­pu­ta­tion be­comes para­mount. This em­pha­sis aligns with Clover­tex’s mis­sion to ex­pe­dite drug dis­cov­ery and ul­ti­mate­ly save pa­tients’ lives. Sim­i­lar­ly, iden­ti­fy­ing rare ad­verse events in drug tri­als is akin to find­ing a nee­dle in a haystack, a chal­lenge that al­so great­ly ben­e­fits from the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of HPC.

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The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech in­dus­tries are at the cut­ting edge of this sym­bi­ot­ic evo­lu­tion. Rec­og­niz­ing the vast ca­pa­bil­i­ties of HPC, these sec­tors are eye­ing ground­break­ing in­no­va­tion and ex­pe­dit­ed R&D. How­ev­er, the jour­ney to ful­ly in­te­grate these com­pu­ta­tion­al tools isn’t straight­for­ward. Tran­si­tion­ing to a com­pu­ta­tion­al par­a­digm is more than just flip­ping a switch. It in­volves nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex world of HPC, which is of­ten be­yond the scope of gener­ic, stand­alone IT so­lu­tions.

How Clover­tex ad­dress­es spe­cif­ic re­search needs and shared chal­lenges

The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor faces unique chal­lenges due to its var­ied sci­en­tif­ic and com­pu­ta­tion­al de­mands. So­lu­tions must be both tai­lored for in­di­vid­ual sci­en­tists and wher­ev­er pos­si­ble stan­dard­ized, ready-to-de­ploy for wide­ly-used com­mer­cial and open-source soft­ware with bench­marked con­fig­u­ra­tions. Nav­i­gat­ing this land­scape re­quires deep knowl­edge of both the sci­en­tif­ic do­main and cloud plat­forms like AWS (Ama­zon Web Ser­vices).

Con­sul­tan­cy en­gage­ment with a gener­ic cloud part­ner that lacks an un­der­stand­ing of a cus­tomer’s spe­cif­ic sci­en­tif­ic needs can re­sult in IT so­lu­tions mis­aligned with what sci­en­tists tru­ly re­quire. It’s es­sen­tial that a move to the cloud doesn’t di­min­ish the sci­en­tist’s user ex­pe­ri­ence. Even if an IT so­lu­tion is for­mal­ly achieved, it won’t be ef­fec­tive if it’s not user-friend­ly for sci­en­tists. For ex­am­ple, while ‘con­tain­ers’ are fa­vored in cloud en­vi­ron­ments, they can some­times mod­i­fy a sci­en­tist’s soft­ware in­ter­ac­tion or per­for­mance, dis­cour­ag­ing its use. Ide­al­ly, cloud so­lu­tions should be seam­less­ly in­te­grat­ed and tai­lored to meet the dis­tinct needs of this spe­cial­ized and reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­try. Tru­ly ex­celling in this space re­quires a knack for fig­ur­ing out how to align tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties with sci­en­tif­ic de­mands ef­fi­cient­ly. Clover­tex dis­tin­guish­es it­self in this re­gard with a two-fold strat­e­gy. One as­pect em­pha­sizes un­matched con­sul­tan­cy in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal HPC, backed by a syn­er­gis­tic team of sci­en­tists and cloud en­gi­neers. This com­mit­ment to tai­lor-made so­lu­tions en­sures clients ac­cess top-tier ex­per­tise and sup­port.

In ad­di­tion to be­spoke so­lu­tions, Clover­tex can stream­line in­tri­cate work­flows in­to pro­duc­tized so­lu­tions, al­low­ing for quick and seam­less im­ple­men­ta­tion across var­i­ous client en­vi­ron­ments. While these of­fer­ings pro­vide a foun­da­tion­al stan­dard, they are al­so adapt­able, en­sur­ing they cater to spe­cif­ic needs. One such flag­ship prod­uct is Nu­men™ (mean­ing ‘di­vine’). De­signed as a sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery plat­form, Nu­men™ in­te­grates se­cure­ly with­in a client’s net­work in­fra­struc­ture, ad­her­ing to all IT reg­u­la­tions (your da­ta nev­er leaves your net­work), and of­fers a user-cen­tric in­ter­face for ad­vanced tasks like ge­nomics and cryo-EM. Next, we’ll de­tail how Nu­men™ ad­dress­es the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with cryo-EM.

Nu­men™ Sci­en­tif­ic Dis­cov­ery Plat­form re­moves the un­dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed lift­ing for cryo-EM

Cryo-EM is an in­valu­able tool in drug dis­cov­ery, al­low­ing sci­en­tists to ob­serve pre­vi­ous­ly in­tractable tar­gets in un­par­al­leled de­tail. How­ev­er, the com­pu­ta­tion­al de­mands of cryo-EM are im­mense and bring forth sev­er­al in­dus­try-wide chal­lenges. Among these are the im­per­a­tives of ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty, ef­fi­cient da­ta trans­fer man­age­ment, the bal­anc­ing act be­tween GPU and CPU com­put­ing needs, stay­ing up­dat­ed with evolv­ing open-source soft­ware tools, and pro­fi­cient­ly man­ag­ing vast datasets.

Nu­men™ emerges as the an­swer to these hur­dles. Nu­men™ is a ful­ly man­aged plat­form-as-a-ser­vice (PaaS), con­stant­ly adapt­ing to the ever-evolv­ing cryo-EM and cloud tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes. With Nu­men™ at their dis­pos­al, re­searchers can im­merse them­selves in their work, as­sured that the com­pu­ta­tion­al in­tri­ca­cies, time­ly soft­ware up­dates, and da­ta man­age­ment are ef­fort­less­ly tak­en care of in the back­ground.

En­gage with Clover­tex and ex­pe­ri­ence Nu­men™

As dig­i­tal sci­ence takes on an even more sig­nif­i­cant role in phar­ma, it is so­lu­tions like Nu­men™ that will de­fine the fu­ture. They em­pow­er re­searchers to push bound­aries, ex­pe­dite dis­cov­er­ies, and in­no­vate freely by har­ness­ing the full po­ten­tial of Cloud and HPC. This ac­cel­er­a­tion trans­lates to quick­er drug dis­cov­ery, man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­mer­cial­iza­tion, and ul­ti­mate­ly, faster treat­ments that save lives.

Clover­tex is ful­ly equipped and com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing this mis­sion, of­fer­ing a com­pre­hen­sive suite of so­lu­tions, from be­spoke and made-to-mea­sure to off-the-rack ser­vices, all de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try. This strat­e­gy not on­ly guar­an­tees max­i­mum flex­i­bil­i­ty but al­so promis­es op­ti­mal cost-ef­fi­cien­cy. Nu­men™ stands as a prime ex­am­ple of this ethos, es­pe­cial­ly ev­i­dent in its adept han­dling of the com­pu­ta­tion­al in­tri­ca­cies of cryo-EM work­flows.

To wit­ness the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of Nu­men™ first­hand and ex­plore how Clover­tex can serve your needs, we in­vite you to con­tact us and see Nu­men™ in ac­tion.