Genetic testing laboratory of BGI Group, a genome sequencing company, in Southwest China's Yunnan Province. Photo: VCG

US tech giant Intel, Chinese tech firm Lenovo and China's BGI Genomics announced on Tuesday a collaboration to accelerate the analysis of COVID-19 genomic characteristics, hoping to push forward the development of a vaccine and immunotherapies for the spreading virus.

The joint efforts from the Chinese and US tech giants come as new cases of the virus arise daily around the world. As of press time, the coronavirus death toll has surpassed 3,000 worldwide, and global infections are approaching 90,000.

Technology support from Intel and Lenovo could support BGI scientists in creating better diagnostic methods and designing an effective vaccine or other protective measures, such as immunotherapies, according to a joint release Lenovo sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.

Technology and life science healthcare experts from Intel and Lenovo will support BGI researchers with the latest big data analytics technologies and computing resources, so as to further advance the capabilities of BGI's sequencing tools and more effectively analyze the genomic characteristics of the coronavirus.

The technology Intel and Lenovo will provide to BGI includes a large HPC cluster to process high-throughput reads from the BGI DNBSEQ-T7 sequencer. BGI Genomics researchers will have access to the latest high-performance computing (HPC) and genomics analytics technologies. 

Shenzhen-based BGI is a leading private genome sequencing company and was among the first batch of firms to develop testing kits for the coronavirus. The firm has just guaranteed a Free Sales Certificate from the Danish Medicines Agency on Sunday, and is preparing to export testing kits to the EU.

"There are still many aspects of the coronavirus that we don't know. As BGI Genomics is working on the genomic analysis of the virus and accelerating infection identification, our efforts require massive computing resources.  And this is exactly where we can contribute our expertise," said Rui Wang, vice president for the sales, marketing, and communications group and country manager for China sales at Intel Corporation.

Global Times