Droplet Biosciences Teams Up with Nvidia to Speed Up Cancer Detection

Droplet Biosciences, a company focused on diagnostics, announced on Tuesday that it’s working with Nvidia to use its artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The goal is to get cancer test results back much faster after surgery.

Droplet has been using Nvidia Parabricks, a special software that uses powerful graphics chips (GPUs) to quickly analyze genomic data from DNA sequencing. This dramatically speeds up how they process genetic information.

Droplet’s method can find any leftover cancer cells within 24 hours. They do this by looking at lymphatic fluid collected after surgery. This is a huge improvement, as it usually takes four to six weeks for these tumor bits to show up in traditional blood tests.

Wendy Winckler, Droplet’s chief scientific officer, explained the benefits. “By using NVIDIA Parabricks’ acceleration, we’ve managed to cut down some of our most complex computing steps from over a day to just a few hours,” she said.

The company also found that even though using GPUs costs more per hour, the much faster processing time actually lowers the overall cost for each test sample. Getting results back quickly means patients can learn about their condition while still in the hospital. This avoids extra trips or long, anxious waits for standard blood tests.

Zhuosheng Gu, a senior director at Droplet Biosciences, added, “We are using Parabricks to speed up our genomic analysis and shorten turnaround time from 10 days to less than five days.” Droplet’s first clinical test focuses on HPV-negative head and neck cancer. This test has been approved under strict clinical laboratory standards.

Droplet is also part of NVIDIA Inception, a program that helps AI startups grow, and is a customer of NVIDIA AI Enterprise. This partnership shows how AI is making a big difference in medical diagnostics.