25 Aug 2020

Introducing the IGX Platform 2.1

IGX Platform 2.1 is now available offering data sharing functionality, improvements to data import and access to more public databases

August 25, 2020

New data sharing functionality, broader data integration support, and performance optimizations give you the most powerful repertoire sequencing data management and analysis experience available.

Secure data sharing with Data Spaces

Access restrictions are an important tool to keep control over the flow of data in an organization and ensure secure collaborative process. Starting from version 2.1, the IGX Platform gives you control over whom to share your data with, should it be your team members, other project stakeholders inside of your organization, or even external collaborators. To this end, we developed the concept of Data Spaces: virtual environments to securely store any (meta)data in a location separate from other project data. You have full control over which data is added to a Data Space and which users have access to it. There is no limit to the number of Data Spaces a user can have access to.

Here’s how it works:

Data Spaces are created by ENPICOM and authorized users are given the necessary access permissions. Only users who have explicitly been granted permission to a Data Space are able to view the data saved within a space.
Data Spaces can be private to a single user, shared between team members working on a specific project, or shared between all users within an organization. Data Spaces can also be shared across organizations, upon request.
When uploading data onto the IGX Platform, authorized users can select in which Data Space the data should be stored. Other users with access will automatically see the new data after importing is complete.

Integration of the IEDB and VDJdb databases

Public immune receptor repositories contain a wealth of information that can aid the development of novel therapeutics and support fundamental and translational research on immune responses. With IGX Platform 2.1, we have curated and included two additional databases for deeper exploration within the platform:

The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) catalogs experimental data on antibody and T cell epitopes studied in humans, non-human primates, and other species in the context of infectious disease, allergy, autoimmunity, and transplantation.
The VDJ database (VDJdb) is a curated database of T cell receptor sequences, many including chain pairing information and with known antigen specificities.

By leveraging the IGX-Compare App, you can now query your data against millions of receptor sequences that have been characterized by researchers around the world and enrich your clones of interest.

Support for MiXCR output

In IGX version 2.1, we have extended support for external data sources even further by including support for annotated clone files generated using MiXCR, in addition to clone tables from commercial platforms such as Adaptive Biotechnologies and 10x Genomics. The MiXCR pipeline is a widely used open source tool for the annotation and quantification of clones. MiXCR users can now continue their downstream analysis workflow on the IGX Platform, featuring its intuitive user interface, ability to integrate sequencing data from different sources, and compare their clones with publicly available databases using IGX-Compare.

Finally, we have implemented various performance optimizations and improvements to the user interface to ensure a smooth experience with the platform. For more information, please see the official release notes.