The Challenge
At Tessera Therapeutics, managing over 1 petabyte of scientific data across large, cross-functional teams of wet lab scientists and computational biologists posed significant challenges. Tessera required a solution that ensured their data was findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR), while supporting the scalability and precision needed for their mission.
The Solution
Tessera Therapeutics leverages Quilt and Nextflow on AWS to overcome its data management challenges and support its mission to revolutionize genetic medicine. Nextflow automates bioinformatics pipelines, handling the computationally intensive tasks involved in processing genomic data. Quilt complements this by providing robust data versioning, metadata management, and lifecycle control on Tessera’s petabyte-scale data in Amazon S3. Together, these tools create an integrated and scalable data workflow.
Tessera's data pipelines ingest information directly from sequencing instruments, external partners, or wet lab instruments into S3. Quilt's Nextflow Integration automates the creation of metadata-enriched data packages, enabling precise tracking of data lineage and version history. Dagster orchestrates workflows by reacting to data arrival events in S3, triggering Nextflow pipelines for analysis and automating the creation of Quilt packages upon pipeline completion. These packages, linked via concise and cryptographically verifiable Quilt URLs, simplify data sharing while ensuring integrity and reproducibility.
As Yohann Potier, Director of Data Platform at Tessera Therapeutics, states, "With Quilt, we’re able to centralize our data and metadata in a way that makes it accessible and trustworthy. The automation we’ve implemented ensures that both computational and experimental teams can find exactly what they need, reducing errors and accelerating our research workflows."
Integration with visualization tools like IGV allows scientists to review experimental outcomes directly in Quilt without needing additional software, while Amazon IAM enforces strict access controls, ensuring the right data reaches the right people. These systems work in tandem to streamline workflows, enhance collaboration across teams, and support Tessera’s ambitious goals in genome engineering.
The Results
By integrating Quilt, Nextflow, and Dagster on AWS, Tessera Therapeutics has transformed its data management and analysis processes, achieving significant operational and scientific benefits. Teams now work with full confidence, knowing the precise version of each dataset, its source, and its lineage. The combination of metadata-enriched Quilt packages and automated workflows has streamlined data retrieval, eliminated redundancy, and ensured data integrity.
Tessera’s experimental and computational teams now have easy access to more than 1 petabyte of scientific data through Quilt’s web platform, where data packages include metadata, quality control metrics, and visualizations. Integration with tools like IGV allows scientists to analyze genomic outcomes directly in Quilt, reducing the need for third-party applications. Enhanced searchability with Amazon OpenSearch Service enables fast and precise metadata queries, while access control through Amazon IAM ensures secure data sharing.
These improvements have reduced the time spent on data discovery and manual curation, accelerating hypothesis testing cycles and enabling faster experimental iteration. Automation has significantly minimized errors, and cryptographically verifiable Quilt URLs ensure trust and reproducibility across teams. With these advancements, Tessera is equipped to manage its vast data landscape while supporting its mission to redefine the future of medicine through Gene Writing™ technology.
