SAN FRANCISCO, CA — 22 August 2023 — The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI) will leverage Filecoin, the largest decentralized data storage network, to democratize access to their groundbreaking cardiac research. To date, the VCCRI is storing 125+ TiBs (137.439 TB) of cardiac research data on the Filecoin network, including raw datasets from published papers consisting of thousands of images of cells and encrypted backups of their SyncroPatch machine, a laboratory technique for studying currents in living cells.
An alternative to costly cloud storage, the Filecoin network offers efficiently priced and geographically decentralized storage for research institutions seeking long-term data availability and immutability. Distributing the world's data storage and moving it away from the current cloud oligopoly, which relies on physical servers in a concentrated number of data centers, also enhances data security and resilience by reducing the threat of damage, loss, theft, firewall breach, or attack.
The VCCRI currently has over 230 scientists, doctors, and staff working together across 23 laboratories across Australia. Founded in 1994 and officially opened in Sydney by the late Diana Princess of Wales in 1996, the VCCRI has pioneered breakthroughs in cardiac research. Some of their significant breakthroughs specialize in congenital heart disease, heart failure, and arrhythmia, with their most recent advancement involving developing computer models that will allow drug companies to predict the cardiac safety of new drugs more accurately and ethically than animal testing.
We're thrilled to partner with the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and aid its life-saving research," said Stefaan Vervaet, Head of Network Growth at Protocol Labs, an ecosystem contributor to the Filecoin network. "Filecoin's open services for data are ideally suited to ensure the preservation and accessibility of cardiac data while safeguarding its availability for further analysis and research endeavors. We want scientists to develop medicines for global illnesses to have at-their-fingertips access to each other's datasets and studies. Establishing a new frontier for the open-source, decentralized technology movement, this milestone solidifies Filecoin's position as a legitimate challenger to legacy centralized infrastructure.”
Filecoin is making a huge difference to the way we store our world research data. It provides a unique service that not only allows data from our key research projects to be stored for perpetuity, it also ensures the integrity of our research data through the use of unique content identifiers. Given that many of our projects increasingly generate huge raw data sets, this is incredibly important for the Institute. It’s also vital that we can easily and safely share open-data sets with like-minded researchers to advance heart disease research that will benefit patients the world over,” said Todd Ryman, IT Director at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
Designed to underpin a more resilient internet, Filecoin acts as a cornerstone for critically important public information, from preserving large culturally relevant datasets, decentralized video applications, apps that verify data integrity, consumer apps that make it easy to store & retrieve data, decentralized data markets, browser support. Filecoin adds incentivized, persistent storage to IPFS, a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data. Filecoin ensures that provable security and authenticity checks are in place, such as content addressing and cryptographic storage proofs, to verify data is stored correctly and securely over time, which is essential in storing delicate health research.
About Protocol Labs
Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory that builds protocols, tools, and services to radically improve the internet. Protocol Labs' projects that are designed to fortify and democratize the web include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more. A fully distributed organization, Protocol Labs is dedicated to driving breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward.
About Filecoin
Filecoin, the world’s largest decentralized storage network, enables users to store, request, and transfer data via a verifiable marketplace. Filecoin’s advanced technology provides a robust foundation to store the world’s most valuable datasets. An alternative to costly cloud storage, the Filecoin network offers efficiently priced and geographically decentralized storage, minimizing financial barriers and allowing users to take advantage of its unmatched network capabilities. Filecoin is completely open source, enabling people from all over the world to participate. For more information about Filecoin, visit destor.io.
About The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute is renowned for the quality of its scientific discoveries and is dedicated to finding cures for cardiovascular disease through world-class and cutting-edge medical research. Their mission is to undertake innovative, inclusive, collaborative, and cutting-edge medical research that improves the understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease. The team at the Institute is working urgently to discover better ways of understanding, diagnosing, treating, and preventing the onset of heart disease and is committed to ensuring its research breakthroughs are translated into advances in clinical care. For more information about The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, please visit https://www.victorchang.edu.au/