Startup of diagnostics Nvidia and Droplet Biosciences collaborate to expedite cancer test results

Diagnostics company Droplet Biosciences on Tuesday announced a collaboration with Nvidia to use the chipmaker’s AI infrastructure to speed up post-surgery cancer test results.

The company has been using NVIDIA Parabricks, a GPU-accelerated software suite, to significantly reduce the time required for genomic data analysis in DNA sequencing. Droplet said its method can detect residual disease within 24 hours by analysing lymphatic fluid collected after surgery. In comparison, traditional blood-based tests can take four to six weeks for tumour remnants to become detectable.

“By leveraging NVIDIA Parabricks’ acceleration, we’ve been able to compress some of our most computationally intensive steps from more than a day down to just a few hours,” said Wendy Winckler, chief scientific officer at Droplet Biosciences.

The company added that although GPU computing may have higher hourly costs, the sharply reduced processing time lowers the overall cost per sample. Faster turnaround times allow patients to receive results while still in the hospital, reducing the need for additional visits and long waiting periods.

Zhuosheng Gu, senior director of informatics, R&D at Droplet Biosciences, said the company is using Parabricks to cut genomic analysis turnaround time from 10 days to less than five days.

Droplet’s first clinical test targets HPV-negative head and neck cancer and has been validated under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. The startup is also a member of the NVIDIA Inception programme and an NVIDIA AI Enterprise customer.