Anthony Nolan: Helping stem cell transplant patients find a lifesaving match with Google Cloud
About Anthony Nolan
The Anthony Nolan charity was set up in 1974 by Shirley Nolan, when doctors were unable to find a suitable transplant match to cure her dying son of a rare blood disorder. Today, Anthony Nolan connects patients in need with incredible strangers via the world's first stem cell donation register, while researching improvements in the accuracy of stem cell matches through gene sequencing.
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Contact usAnthony Nolan conducts research to improve the accuracy of stem cell matches between patients and donors, leveraging the flexible infrastructure of Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- Improves storage capabilities for gene sequencing research
- Maximizes computing capabilities while keeping costs low with pay-as-you-go model
- Helps scientists explore new frontiers with a flexible cloud infrastructure
Enables cutting-edge research with Compute Engine
For many people with blood cancer or a blood disorder, a stem cell transplant is their last chance at life. But identifying a matching donor can be a challenge. Anthony Nolan is a charity, founded in 1974, which matches patients living with blood cancer and blood disorders with people willing to donate their stem cells and bone marrow for a potential transplant.
As the world's first stem cell register, Anthony Nolan is motivated by Shirley Nolan's determination to save her son, Anthony. Although he never had his second chance of life, thousands of lives have been saved by an ever-growing stem cell register, thanks to Shirley and Anthony.
"Essentially, we are that link that connects individuals who need a transplant with those who are willing to provide the cells," says James Robinson, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Anthony Nolan.
In addition to its pioneering register, Anthony Nolan continues Shirley's lifesaving legacy at the Anthony Nolan Research Institute, where scientists study gene sequencing so they can make more accurate matches of DNA between the cell donor and recipient.
"When we talk about matching, we want things to be as close as possible for the best chance of survival," explains Robinson. "There are thousands of variants per gene, and even the smallest difference, like a single letter in the DNA sequence, can reduce the chances of the transplant working."
This is where bioinformatics come in. As gene sequencing techniques evolve and improve over the years, labs have also increased their capabilities to run multiple sequences at once, making it almost impossible to do the analysis manually.
Because scientists at Anthony Nolan have been undertaking long-read sequencing that produces large amounts of data, the team required a lot of computing power. Back in 2014, running virtual machines (VMs) around the clock was a costly process. As a workaround, they built their own High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster in-house. The problem? They often faced system maintenance and storage issues, that took lots of time - and money – to resolve.
That was when Robinson began to consider Google Cloud, citing its storage capabilities, light-touch system administration, flexibility and security as decisive factors.
"The low-cost, high-availability storage that enabled us to upload terabytes of data without worry was what drew us to Google Cloud," says Robinson. "Our work on this project has been to identify applications that are suitable and deploy them. If they're not there, we develop the applications ourselves, and Google Cloud provides us with the infrastructure to do this."
"Our work on this project has been to identify applications that are suitable and deploy them. If they're not there, we develop the applications ourselves, and Google Cloud provides us with the infrastructure to do this."
—James Robinson, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Anthony NolanAnalyzing gene sequences at speed with Compute Engine
For independent organizations, resources can sometimes be limited, particularly when it comes to the high cost of running laboratory research. As such, the Anthony Nolan team has to be creative and innovative, always looking for the best options to achieve their goals.
More than the storage capabilities that Google Cloud promises, it was the powerful computing technology that made Google Cloud an ideal platform for the charity. "We do some cutting-edge sequencing, and the research team are always looking to push the boundaries of what they need to do and what they want to sequence, so having the freedom to change specifications quickly and being able to power up or down has been a great advantage," says Robinson.
Scientists use Compute Engine and Cloud Run to run different variations of a task, without worrying about managing machines with different resources. They can increase compute resources quickly when they need to run analyses, and quickly scale back down after they are done. "The flexible, parallel running capabilities that Compute Engine offers has really been a winner for us, because it means we don't waste any resources, while achieving what we set out to do." says Robinson.
The research team also uses Compute Engine to support the containerization of individual applications that have been developed internally, before building them into Docker, where they run their applications. The self-managed nature of Compute Engine has simplified the maintenance and deployment of their workflows.
Information security and data protection is also important to Anthony Nolan, so the Google Cloud’s built-in tools allowed its teams to decrypt and anonymise data, rendering it unreadable and therefore unusable by anyone it wasn't meant for.
"The flexible, parallel running capabilities that Compute Engine offers has really been a winner for us because it means we don't waste any resources, while achieving what we set out to do."
—James Robinson, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Anthony NolanCreating bespoke, tailored solutions in a sustainable cloud infrastructure
There are many moving parts to their research, so having the capability to run multiple analysis pipelines for different genes and easily move between different modules is key to enabling an agile and transformational research environment.
"The infrastructure of Google Cloud is unique, as it allows scientists to move between different modules, and add or remove modules at each individual stage of their research. This flexibility is so important, because in this field, we’re often looking for answers that maybe aren't even out there yet," Robinson says.
Despite being a relatively small charity, Anthony Nolan has been able to take advantage of the full capabilities of Google Cloud because they only have to pay for what they use. Although moving to the pay-as-you-go model required team members to change their mindsets, it gave them more freedom, since they no longer had to think about how to make the most of the large upfront cost of compute resources, and manage ongoing maintenance costs. This has prompted the research team at the charity to investigate the feasibility of moving a number of its other systems to the cloud.
"The cloud technology field moves very quickly, and you have to be aware of those changes in order to make it relevant to the work we do. Bringing in someone with expertise in this area has been a real bonus for us as we continue to pave the way for a better future for patients."
—James Robinson, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Anthony NolanExploring new frontiers with BigQuery
Robinson and his team are already looking into BigQuery to better understand how it can fit in with the work they are doing.
As an enterprise data warehouse with a noSQL database, BigQuery also opens doors for scientists at the Anthony Nolan Research Institute to explore different ways of storing and interrogating data. "We are already doing proof of concepts, and the initial work has all been very positive, not to mention economical," explains Robinson.
But in order to fully maximize the potential of the Google Cloud ecosystem, the team brought in DevOps personnel to support the more technical aspects as a next step, so they can better integrate technology with the research work being done at the lab.
"The cloud technology field moves very quickly, and you have to be aware of those changes in order to make it relevant to the work we do," says Robinson. "Bringing in someone with expertise in this area has been a real bonus for us as we continue to pave the way for a better future for stem cell transplant patients."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Anthony Nolan
The Anthony Nolan charity was set up in 1974 by Shirley Nolan, when doctors were unable to find a suitable transplant match to cure her dying son of a rare blood disorder. Today, Anthony Nolan connects patients in need with incredible strangers via the world's first stem cell donation register, while researching improvements in the accuracy of stem cell matches through gene sequencing.