Supporting Clinical and Drug Development Research with A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute

Joint Partnership Initiative with A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (A*STAR BII)

A*STAR BII sought to enhance their drug-protein interaction analysis capabilities to better support Singapore’s National Precision Medicine programme and the global research community. On the road to marking the landmark achievement of completing 100,000 whole genomes under PRECISE-SG100K (which was celebrated in August 2025), A*STAR BII focused on strengthening their platform to:

• Scale for broader impact:
  Enhance technology stacks to support the wider genomics and health ecosystem, accommodating the rapidly increasing volumes of genetic data.
• Democratise access:
  Transform complex analytical workflows into accessible cloud-native solutions for researchers across institutions
• Process comprehensive datasets:
  Enable analysis of Singapore’s population-specific genomic variants alongside global datasets exceeding 70 million protein-altering variants

Through a joint partnership with A*STAR BII, we co-developed a solution for analysing drug-binding site variants and assessing potential drug resistance across diverse populations of over 800,000 individuals at unprecedented speed (i.e. 5 minutes to map a personal genome) and scale. This work builds on data-sharing and collaborations within Singapore’s broader precision medicine ecosystem, including Precision Health Research Singapore (PRECISE), NUS, SingHealth Duke-NUS, LKCMedicine, and industry collaborators Illumina and NovogeneAIT Genomics.

Photo below: Temus and A*STAR BII team at the event “SG100K: Celebrating a Genomic Landmark of 100,000 Genomes” hosted by A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore. Temus and A*STAR BII were invited to present on the implementation of the SNPdrug3D tool on ICA.

What are Pharmacogenomics Assessments and Why are They Important?

Pharmacogenomics assessments are comprehensive evaluations that analyse how an individual’s genetic makeup affects their response to medications. These assessments examine genetic variants that influence how an individual may respond to medications differently from another, thereby aiding clinical studies in predicting drug metabolism, efficacy, and safety.

The importance of pharmacogenomics assessments lies in their ability to move medicine toward personalised treatment approaches, reducing adverse drug reactions, improving therapeutic efficacy, and supporting more targeted drug development strategies. This precision medicine approach can significantly improve patient outcomes while reducing healthcare costs associated with trial-and-error or one-size-fits-all prescriptions.

What We Co-Developed

• Genomic Data Integration and Annotation Pipeline Development – Created a non-redundant proteome database with PRECISE data, updated sequence and structure databases, developed mapping tables, and built a comprehensive annotation pipeline that processes user-input VCF files with defined annotation fields. This technical foundation work was crucial to solving fundamental data quality and representation of data to enhance the effectiveness of pharmacogenomic research for the target Asian populations.
• SNPdrug3D Platform Development and Integration into Illumina Connected Analytics (ICA) Workflow– Dockerised the annotation pipeline for compatibility with ICA – the industry-standard cloud infrastructure used by genomics researchers and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. We deployed this as a standalone service with cloud storage integration using Amazon S3 and ECR (Elastic Container Registry) to ensure consistent and reliable performance, secure handling of data sets and streamlined management of the platform.
• Data Visualisation Python Module for Protein-Altering Variants – Developed a comprehensive visualisation tool that defines display outputs for protein variant-drug pairs, includes search functionality for protein/gene filtering, and was packaged as a Python module with JupyterLab integration for Illumina ICA Workspace but also works as a standalone module. This visualisation tool would bridge the gap between sophisticated bioinformatics capabilities and practical research application, enabling more researchers to benefit from advanced genomic analysis.

What’s Next:

Building on the success of speed improvements and global accessibility, our joint partnership will be focused on developing next-generation capabilities including:

• Expanding the compendium of annotated protein-drug structures in the platform to include more experimental and AI-predicted protein-drug structures as they become available
• Real-time collaborative analysis and resource sharing enabling global research teams to work simultaneously on shared datasets
• Automated drug resistance profiling providing instant insights for clinical decision-making

The platform’s success will help strengthen Singapore’s position in precision treatment, opening opportunities to support pharmaceutical companies in accelerating drug development and realising personalised medicine.

Looking ahead, A*STAR BII will continue strengthening its focus on AI-driven biomedical innovation to enhance Singapore’s research and industry competitiveness.

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Temus can review how your organisation processes and analyses complex data. Whether you need real-time clinical decision support for healthcare providers, instant risk assessment for financial services, interactive data exploration for research institutions, or collaborative analytics platforms for global teams, our advanced data partitioning algorithms, intelligent caching systems, and cloud-native architecture can transform your data queries from hours-long processes into seconds-long insights, whilst enabling worldwide collaboration and accessibility that democratises access to advanced analytics capabilities across your entire organisation.