World’s Most Powerful Supercomputer for Personalised Medicine

Scientists in Japan are harnessing the power of Supercomputer.

In a futuristic turn of events, Supercomputer enables experts to make personalized medicine. The concept of personalized medicine is based on the fact that everyone's body is different and medicine should not be following the one-size-fits-all rule. This idea of personalized medicine is extremely important as societies in developed countries have put more burden on the healthcare systems. But the creation of such medicines requires analyzing gigantic amounts of data which is only possible by a supercomputer. Scientists in Japan are harnessing the world's most powerful supercomputer, Fugaku, to discover customized treatments.

The Role Of Big Data

A researcher in Kyoto University's Graduate School Of Medicine, Kamada Mayumi, is building a database of genomic information and anonymous clinical data from the local citizens to use it in the computer simulations. The aim of taking this route is to utilize Japan's high-quality data to understand how healthcare is data-driven and predictive.

Kamada and her fellow researchers in the Department of Biomedical Data Intelligence want to use the clinical data to study how genes affect diseases and their treatments. Genomics is the study of a person's entire genetic makeup and this study helps researchers to understand why some patients fall sick from certain behaviors or environmental conditions while others don't.

"Our genomes influence how we are affected by disease or how effective medication is for us", says Kamada. "Genomic medicine can help us determine the appropriate treatment for the disease, as well as preventive measures. The personalized approach could mean patients will not have to suffer from the unpleasant side effects of cancer treatments, for instance."

The Fugaku supercomputer is expected to speed up their research. Developed by Japan's RIKEN research center and Fujitsu, Fugaku is ranked No. 1 in the Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. This supercomputer also gave insights into the coronavirus by helping scientists find potential therapeutic agents and simulating the behaviors of airborne virus particles. This is just one of its applications for healthcare.

Kyoto University's professor Okuno Yasushi will lead the research team to run simulations on Fugaku that mimic the interactions between cells and potential drug molecules. This is known as molecular dynamics. These complex simulations can help experts understand how proteins interact with other molecules.

Medical Discoveries

Head of the Fugaku supercomputer project at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Matsuoka Santoshi, says that high-performance computing platforms can give birth to important medical discoveries because they combine three vital elements – high-speed data processing to handle the giant volumes of data, artificial intelligence applications, and complex computer simulations. "High-performance machines like Fugaku are platforms for supporting all three very tightly in an integrated fashion. For medicine, this allows us to come up with much better ground truth, for example about how genomes are supposed to work, or in pharmaceutical research how potential drugs will be interacting with viruses", says Matsuoka.

According to Matsuoka, AI systems with the support of past clinical data and simulations on supercomputers will be able to outperform experts in predicting medical outcomes. This will improve the medical forecast, improve pharmaceutical development and replace experiments and clinical trials.

Once Fugaku is officially launched in March 2021, Kamada and other researchers will begin to share the resources. Matsuoka expects many institutions beyond Japan to use Fugaku for medical breakthroughs. "High-performance computing is really the dawn of a new era for medical research. We expect many groups to be using Fugaku to advance science and technology and advance social needs, and it's our duty to keep the machine pristine."