OXFORD, England and
AUSTIN, Texas, May 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The emergence
of more infectious variants of the COVID-19 virus is threatening to
slow the global recovery and potentially thwart current vaccine
immunity. To help governments and medical communities identify and
act on these variants faster, Oxford
University and Oracle have created a Global Pathogen
Analysis System (GPAS) combining Oxford's Scalable Pathogen Pipeline Platform
(SP3) with the power of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
(OCI). This initiative builds on the work of a Wellcome
Trust-funded consortium including Public Health Wales, the
University of Cardiff, and Public
Health England.
"This powerful new tool will enable public health scientists in
research establishments, public health agencies, healthcare
services, and diagnostic companies around the world to help further
understanding of infectious diseases, starting with the
coronavirus," said Derrick Crook,
Professor of Microbiology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at
the University of Oxford.
"The Global Pathogen Analysis System will help to establish
a global common standard for assembling and analyzing this new
virus, as well as other microbial threats to public health. This
adds a new dimension in our ability to process pathogen data. We
are excited to partner with Oracle to further our research using
this cutting-edge technology platform," added Crook.
First used for tuberculosis, SP3 has been repurposed
to unify, standardize, analyze, and compare sequence data of
SARS-CoV-2, yielding annotated genomic sequences and identifying
new variants and those of concern. SP3's processing
capability has been enhanced with extensive new development work
from Oracle, enabling high performance and security plus 7 by 24
worldwide availability of the SP3 system in the Oracle
Cloud. The SP3 system will now deliver
comprehensive and standardized results of COVID-19 analyses within
minutes of submission on an international scale. The results will
be shared with countries around the globe in a secure
environment.
"The opportunity of applying systematic examination for genetic
variants in a range of pathogens will have major benefits for
global public health. This program, with Oracle as a partner, takes
us a step closer to this goal," said Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at the
University of Oxford.
Coupled with the extensive machine learning capabilities in
the Oracle Cloud, collaborating scientists, researchers, and
governments worldwide can process, analyze, visualize, and act on a
wide collection of COVID-19 pathogen data for the first time. This
includes identifying variants of interest and their potential
impact on vaccine and treatment effectiveness. For example,
analytics dashboards in the system will show which specific strains
are spreading more quickly than others and whether genetic features
contribute to increased transmissibility and vaccine escape.
Already, Oxford has processed half
the world's SARS-CoV-2 sequences, more than 500,000 in total.
"There is a critical need for global cooperation on genomic
sequencing and examination of COVID-19 and other pathogens," said
Oracle Chairman and CTO, Larry
Ellison. "The enhanced SP3 system will
establish a global standard for pathogen data gathering and
analysis, thus enabling medical researchers to better understand
the COVID-19 virus and other microbial threats to public
health."
The next step will be to extend this service to all pathogens
while simultaneously collaborating with scientists from research
establishments, public health agencies, and private companies to
ensure this work can inform decision making on pandemic response
strategies worldwide.
The platform will be free for researchers and non-profits
to use worldwide.
What the healthcare community is saying:
"The SP3 platform has come out of engagement, design
and testing activities that have been running over the past several
years through close collaboration between researchers at
Cardiff University and the
University of Oxford, Public Health
England and the European Bioinformatics Institute, along with other
stakeholders from public health in the UK. This new Global Pathogen
Analysis System will enable collaborating scientists to analyze a
pool of worldwide data in new ways, providing better intelligence
on virus variants of concern and their potential for spread," said
Professor Thomas R Connor, School of Bioscience at Cardiff University.
Dr. Isabel Oliver, Director of
the National Infection Service at Public Health England noted,
"This donation is a welcome boost to the ability to share genomic
sequencing data with colleagues all across the world. Not only are
strong genomic examination and widely-available data crucial to our
collective efforts to combat the current pandemic, but they will
have ongoing benefits to the response to other pathogens in the
future. This could potentially have a far-reaching positive impact
on international public health and global health security. As new
variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge around the world, it requires a
cooperative global effort to respond effectively. Partnerships like
this one are absolutely vital to ensuring that we can mitigate the
impact of COVID-19 on the world's population, and that we can
continue to strengthen our ability to confront emerging threats in
the years to come."
About Oxford
University
Oxford
University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher
Education World University Rankings for the fifth year running, and
at the heart of this success is our ground-breaking research and
innovation.
Oxford is world-famous for
research excellence and home to some of the most talented people
from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions,
solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships
and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our
research sparks imaginative and inventive insights and
solutions.
Through its research commercialization arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer
in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts,
having created more than 200 new companies since 1988. Over a third
of these companies have been created in the past three years.
About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of
applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle
Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please
visit us at oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle, Java and MySQL are registered
trademarks of Oracle Corporation.
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oxford-university-and-oracle-partner-to-speed-identification-of-covid-19-variants-301292153.html
SOURCE Oracle