High-level description
The Research Collaboration Platform (RCP) offers a cutting-edge solution specifically designed to enhance the efficiency and security of the drug discovery process in the life sciences sector. Developed in collaboration with a leading global life-science customer, the platform enables external researchers to form consortiums for sharing data and leveraging High-Performance Computing (HPC) to accelerate the validation of hypotheses. This collaborative approach significantly speeds up the overall drug discovery process, offering numerous benefits to customers:
- Enhanced Collaboration: RCP facilitates seamless collaboration among researchers from different organizations, enabling them to share nonproprietary data without the need for integration with internal corporate infrastructure. This openness fosters innovation and accelerates research outcomes.
- Scalability and Flexibility: With its infrastructure coded for agility, the RCP platform allows for the quick setup and dismantling of research environments. This ensures that resources are optimally utilized, and consortia can dynamically scale their operations based on current needs without leaving residual data.
- Advanced Security Measures: The platform is built with AWS’s best practices for security, incorporating additional safeguards to prevent unauthorized access and use of shared data. An ongoing security evaluation process ensures that access is tightly controlled and restricted to its intended use, providing peace of mind regarding data integrity and confidentiality.
- Efficient Use of Technology: RCP leverages AWS technologies like Elastic File System, Amazon FSx, S3 for data storage, and ParallelCluster for HPC cluster management, combined with a serverless Aurora database for efficient accounting. This robust technical foundation ensures high performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
- Ease of Management: Deployed via customers DevOps pipelines and managed through AWS’s CDK, the platform simplifies the management of infrastructure, allowing for automatic deployments and updates. This streamlined approach reduces the administrative burden on teams and enables them to focus on research and development.
- Future-Proofing: While initial collaborations can occur without integrating with corporate infrastructures, the RCP provides a pathway for successful consortiums to transition their work into corporate networks if needed, offering flexibility for future development phases.
Technical overview
The RCP platform is build using AWS components, see diagram below for a High-level overview:
The solution is built in a VPC with the following AWS technology:
- AWS Elastic File System,
- Amazon FSx
- S3 as the data components.
Additionally ParallelCluster is used for the HPC cluster management and uses a serverless Aurora database for accounting. The ParallelCluster HeadNode is fronted by an Application Loadbalancer.
Route53 is used to control DNS.
Everything is written in CDK for automatic deployment and are deployed using the customers DevOps pipelines.
Customer value
In summary, the RCP platform presents a transformative approach to drug discovery by enabling secure, efficient, and collaborative research efforts. Its use of advanced AWS technologies, combined with the flexibility of infrastructure as code and stringent security measures, positions it as an invaluable tool for accelerating innovation in the life sciences sector.