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Ares Genetics Tests for Antimicrobial Susceptibility With Machine Learning Using AWS
2022
Addressing Antimicrobial Resistance Challenges
An increasing number of bacterial pathogens are becoming resistant to many drugs globally. Bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was responsible for 1.27 million deaths in 2019. This overlooked trend of AMR severely limits treatment options, increasing patient morbidity and mortality. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by 2050, over 10 million people will die every year because of such untreatable multi drug-resistant microorganisms. Current diagnostics are not efficient or comprehensive enough to help providers choose the right infection treatment for a patient every time.
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AWS is crucial to bioinformatics research and development at Ares Genetics."
Arne Materna, Ph.D.
CEO, Ares Genetics
Building a Knowledge Base Solution on AWS
To enable better infection control and more targeted patient care, digital diagnostic company Ares Genetics aims to provide unprecedented insight into AMR through DNA sequencing and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. One objective is to enable antibiotic susceptibility testing directly from pathogen whole genome sequencing or metagenomic sequencing data. Building infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ares Genetics developed an AMR knowledge base called ARESdb to comprehensively detect and determine the genetic profile of bacterial pathogens. ARESdb contains a growing proprietary collection of clinical pathogen genomes and associated phenotypic susceptibility information for major clinical pathogens and antibiotics on which machine learning (ML) models for antimicrobial susceptibility testing are trained. Using AWS Batch, a fully managed batch processing service that plans, schedules, and executes batch computing workloads, Ares Genetics could scale on demand for AI training sprints and continually retrain with new data at low cost. The company further optimized training algorithms for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) using AWS Batch.
These models are an essential part of the Ares Genetics portfolio of sequencing services and software solutions for pathogen characterization, outbreak surveillance, infection control, and the targeted delivery of antimicrobial therapy. “Comprehensive genomic information about pathogens provides the chance to use AI to determine antimicrobial susceptibility and identify which antibiotics represent suitable treatment options,” said Arne Materna, Ph.D., chief executive officer (CEO) of Ares Genetics.
Developing Automatic Processes Using AWS
Ares Genetics also validated, in compliance with CLIA-guidelines, an end-to-end workflow for pathogen isolate sequencing (ARESiss) and created a user-friendly, cloud-based data interpretation system called AREScloud to support this workflow. AREScloud is commercially available and fully automates pathogen identification, the characterization of AMR, and genotyping-assisted outbreak analysis. The AWS Support team provided critical IT support, maintenance, and security throughout the customer’s development of AREScloud. Using AWS Amplify, which provides a continuous delivery and hosting service for web applications, and AWS AppSync, an enterprise-level, fully managed GraphQL service with near real-time data synchronization and offline programming features, Ares Genetics saved both time and money by using serverless deployment of AREScloud to automate data processing pipelines.
Ares Genetics built a scalable, economical infrastructure on AWS for its groundbreaking DNA sequencing infectious disease services. “AWS is crucial to bioinformatics research and development at Ares Genetics,” said Materna. “Our company’s infectious disease data interpretation services, including DNA sequencing-based antimicrobial susceptibility testing, can now be leveraged by clinical labs across the globe to make comprehensive AMR prevention decisions in hours.”
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See how AWS is supporting other leading life science organizations in their quest to improve human health.
About Ares Genetics
Ares Genetics, an OpGen Group Company, is developing DNA-based infectious disease services and solutions for drug response prediction to improve the way antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections are diagnosed and prevented or treated.
Benefits of AWS
• Scales on demand to support training sprints
• Supports database curation and AI model training
• Reduces burden on developer and security teams
• Automates processing pipelines
• Reduces cost of processing and optimization
AWS Services Used
AWS Batch
AWS Batch enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS.
AWS Amplify
AWS Amplify is a set of purpose-built tools and features that lets frontend web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage the breadth of AWS services as your use cases evolve.
Amazon AppSync
AWS AppSync is a fully managed service that makes it easy to develop GraphQL APIs by handling the heavy lifting of securely connecting to data sources like AWS DynamoDB, Lambda, and more.
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