In conjunction with National Cancer Awareness Month, China Human Proteome Organization, a member of Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) and Silicon Graphics announced the completed installation of SGI supercomputing and storage solutions for research designed to ultimately link liver-specific proteins to diseases such as hepatitis and liver cancer that could save hundreds of thousands of people dying from liver cancer.

The Human Liver Proteome Project (HLPP) is backed by an initial round of $16 million in funding from the Chinese Government for a three-year pilot study to be completed in 2005. The effort was launched in May 2004 and is aimed at setting up the collaborations, standards, and procedures for tallying the thousands of proteins expressed in human liver cells. So far, 79 labs, 37 of them in China, have signed on to the liver proteome effort.

Scientists rely on the computational power of the SGI Altix system, installed in September 2004, to conduct analytical and biochemical research on liver samples in an attempt to identify links between diseases and protein changes. The shared-memory capabilities of the Altix system are particularly useful to researchers whose detailed analysis on multiple samples can generate 25GB of data every day, resulting in up to 20TB of data a year.

"A problem of this magnitude is extremely challenging. That's why we selected the SGI solution," Yun Ping Zhu, director of Gene and Protein Research Group said adding, "The scalability architecture, high-bandwidth and shared-memory capabilities of the SGI solution make it possible to compute and manage the massive amounts of data needed to conduct protein research of this magnitude. To meet our requirements for large data management, we use an SGI SAN solution with more than 40TB storage capability and CXFS shared file system for easy access to all our data."

"We are excited that China Human Proteome Organization, one of the top life science research organizations, is using SGI technology for their leading-edge liver research," said Alex Lee, president, SGI China. "For more than two decades, SGI core competencies of HPC, storage and visualization have been keenly aligned with the development of life sciences in the world and have helped in accelerating research progress, fuelling innovation and discovery in many disciplines. We believe this unique combination of SGI technology and life science leading scientists will ultimately lead to faster and more successful life science research in China," he added.

SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage.