FASTGenomics launched!

With a kickoff event of all involved researchers, developers and data scientists, we are happy to announce that FASTGenomics has started. FASTGenomics is a research and development project that wants to speed up a currently ongoing exciting development in genomics. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Energy, we want to build a platform that supports researchers in the new and rapidly growing field of single cell genomics.

For some years now, next generation sequencing made it possible to run affordable genome analyses at large scales. However, transcriptome analysis was performed on the aggregated measurements of hundreds or thousands of cells. Recent advancements in sequencing technologies now make it possible to study biological processes at the fundamental level of life: the individual cell.
We are convinced that single cell sequencing will have a huge impact in medicine and microbiology, in particular in human immunology, leading to new therapies in many common diseases.

However, scientists are still struggling with challenges provided by the data. Data sets are very large, sparse, noisy, and have to be connected with many external knowledge sources to provide meaningful interpretation. FASTGenomics is addressing these challenges: together, Comma Soft AG and LIMES Institute of Bonn University want to build a platform that brings together all players in this interdisciplinary field. Comma Soft brings in over 20 years of experience in building software for knowledge management and visual analytics, while experts at LIMES provide the project with their expertise in single cell transcriptomics.
The FASTGenomics core team is currently defining a first prototype to get the most basic functionality out to users as soon as possible.