McMaster University Deploys Pure Storage FlashBlade

Pure Storage, Inc. announced that the McArthur lab at McMaster University is using its FlashBlade as its backbone in the fight vs. antibiotic resistance in superbugs through data.

As superbug resistance and the growing global scourge of Covid-19 places modern medicine under siege, the lab is fighting back. Somewhere in the millions of data points processed in the lab daily, there’s a new treatment waiting to be discovered.

In charge of the lab is genomics professor and researcher Andrew G. McArthur, Ph.D. He is using Pure’s technology to accelerate decision-making in the fight vs. life-threatening superbugs and viruses like Covid-19.

To support this mission, McArthur made the decision to use FashBlade, na unified fast file and object storage platform designed to handle complex processes associated with massive genomic datasets. This sped up the time to research and seek cures for superbugs. When Covid-19 hit, the lab was able to pivot immediately and leverage the infrastructure already in place to combat the virus.

“There’s no point in playing with traditional storage because it’s just not fast enough,” said McArthur. “With Pure we can stay ahead of the curve as we fight global threats to human health.“

Using data, and backed by the storage infrastructure from Pure, the lab developed a tool for the international health sciences community that can help determine how the virus that causes Covid-19 is spreading and whether it is evolving. The tool tracks how the virus changes over time, how it transmits between people and how well it survives outside the body – it can help scientists understand if the virus has evolved between patient A and patient B.

“Data is critical to the daily insights in the lab,” said McArthur. “However, the vast and growing amount of information relies on near-instant processing times. By replacing our legacy storage infrastructure with Pure, we have the ability to gain insight into the virus through next-generation sequencing.“

As gene sequencing technology continues to advance, rapid scalability and performance will remain critical to the lab’s efforts.

“The need to quickly identify and respond to global threats to human health has never been clearer,” said Josh Gluck, VP of global healthcare technology strategy, Pure. “With FlashBlade, researchers at McArthur Lab can continue to conduct research that has widespread global impact.“

Case study: Need for Speed in the Fight for Global Health