Latch

Latch.bio is an end-to-end cloud platform designed specifically for biotech teams. According to the vendor, it aims to provide a scalable and accessible solution for data analysis, with the goal of accelerating research and development milestones for biotech companies. The product is suitable for biotech teams of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. It caters to professionals in the fields of biology, bioinformatics, research science, data science, and the biotech industry as a whole.

Key Features

Latch Data: A scalable cloud storage solution that allows users to easily upload data of any size and type from various sources, including local computers and AWS S3 buckets. According to the vendor, it also provides a CLI for streaming data from on-premise systems and supports secure data migration from GCP and Azure.

Latch Registry: A collaborative database interface that enables efficient management of mission-critical metadata on NGS files. It offers a shared table interface for easy editing and referencing of files stored in Latch Data, and allows users to create parent-child relationships between tables.

Latch Workflow Manager: The product offers flexibility in uploading workflows from any programming language, supporting popular languages/frameworks such as R, Bash, Biocontainers, NF-Core, Snakemake, WDL, and CWL. It provides auto-generation of workflow interfaces, allowing users to define tasks using Python functions. According to the vendor, it also offers scalability options to accommodate different computational needs.

Latch Pods: The product provides scalable, on-demand cloud computers with customizable CPU cores, RAM, and storage. Users can start large cloud computers instantly and access built-in Jupyter Lab, RStudio, and bash terminals for analysis. It also supports SSH connectivity from local computers and offers options for auto-shutoff to optimize costs.

Data Provenance: According to the vendor, the product supports data provenance by providing a complete history of creation events, ensuring compliance requirements are met.

Default Visualizations: The product offers default visualizations for NGS files such as FastQ, BAM, SAM, VCF, and PDB. Users can utilize tools like FastQC, IGV, and Protein Viewer to analyze and visualize their data, according to the vendor.

Metadata Organization: The product provides tools for organizing sequencing files with metadata in a table-like format. It supports importing bulk data via spreadsheets like Excel or CSV, according to the vendor. Users can easily search, filter, and launch batched analyses from Registry tables.

Secure Data Access: According to the vendor, the product enables users to securely migrate data from GCP and Azure to Latch using Latch SDK and Latch Secrets. It also allows users to obtain public datasets on-demand, including those from NCBI's Sequence Read Archive.

Workflow Reproducibility: The product supports reproducibility by saving, sharing, and reusing compute environments, ensuring that workflows can be easily replicated and shared among team members, according to the vendor.