NEW YORK: Amazon.com Inc is in a race against Google Inc to store data
on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new
medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth US$1
billion a year by 2018.
Academic institutions and healthcare companies are
picking sides between their cloud computing offerings - Google Genomics or
Amazon Web Services - spurring the two to one-up each other as they win
high-profile genomics business, according to interviews with researchers,
industry consultants and analysts.
That growth is being propelled by,
among other forces, the push for personalized medicine, which aims to base
treatments on a patient's DNA profile. Making that a reality will require
enormous quantities of data to reveal how particular genetic profiles respond
to different treatments.
Already, universities and drug manufacturers are embarking on projects
to sequence the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people.
The human genome is the full complement of DNA, or
genetic material, a copy of which is found in nearly every cell of the body.
Clients view Google and Amazon
as doing a better job storing genomics data than they can do using their own
computers, keeping it secure, controlling costs and allowing it to be easily
shared.
The cloud companies are going
beyond storage to offer analytical functions that let scientists make sense of
DNA data. Microsoft Corp and International Business Machines are also competing
for a slice of the market. The "cloud" refers to data or software
that physically resides in a server and is accessible via the internet, which
allows users to access it without downloading it to their own computer.
Now an estimated US$100 million to
US$300 million business globally, the cloud genomics market is expected to grow
to US$1 billion by 2018, said research analyst Daniel Ives of investment bank
FBR Capital. By that time, the entire cloud market should have US$50 billion to
US$75 billion in annual revenue, up from about US$30 billion now.
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