SAFETY: Secure gwAs in Federated Environment through a hYbrid Solution

Area of Science:

• Genomics
• Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Genomic data analysis, particularly genome-wide association studies (GWAS), is crucial for identifying genetic risk factors for diseases.
• Collaborative research necessitates pooling data from multiple genomic repositories, posing significant privacy and cross-border data sharing challenges.
• Existing methods struggle to balance the need for data accessibility with stringent privacy requirements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present SAFETY, a novel hybrid framework designed for secure genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on federated genomic datasets.
• To enable privacy-preserving collaborative research by securely accessing and analyzing distributed genomic information.
• To enhance the efficiency and security of conducting GWAS across multiple data sources.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a hybrid framework combining homomorphic encryption and Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX).
• Utilizing federated learning principles to analyze distributed genomic datasets without centralizing sensitive information.
• Development of the SAFETY framework to ensure both high computational efficiency and robust data privacy.

Main Results:

• Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy and applicability of the SAFETY framework in securely conducting GWAS.
• The hybrid approach of homomorphic encryption and Intel SGX offers a unique solution for privacy-preserving genomic data analysis.
• SAFETY achieves up to 4.82 times greater speed compared to existing secure computation techniques.

Conclusions:

• The SAFETY framework provides a groundbreaking solution for secure and efficient GWAS on federated genomic data.
• This hybrid approach represents a significant advancement in privacy-preserving computational biology and collaborative genomic research.
• The proposed method addresses critical challenges in cross-border genomic data sharing, paving the way for more effective healthcare insights.