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Published on August 30, 2007

Hoping to halt the spread of deadly infectious diseases now threatening to reach epidemic proportions around the world, a new research effort was launched by IBM, the University of Texas Medical Branch and the University of Chicago to search for drugs that may one day cure or treat dengue fever, West Nile encephalitis and a host of related diseases including Yellow Fever and Hepatitis C.

 Dengue fever, found primarily in Asia and in areas around the equator line, and West Nile virus, which affects Africa, Asia and Europe, have no known drug treatments, are primarily passed to adults and children by infected mosquitoes, and are responsible for millions of illnesses, as well as thousands of deaths each year.

The project, "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together," will use the vast computational research power of World Community Grid, with the power equivalent to one of  world's top five supercomputers,  yet comprised of individual volunteers who are donating unused computer time.  Calculations will be run on World Community Grid to find the best combinations of drug molecules that will inhibit the replication of the viruses that cause dengue, West Nile encephalitis, Yellow fever and Hepatitis C.  Once these are identified, researchers can begin testing these drugs to determine their effectiveness.

"Dengue Fever and West Nile Virus have become a major health concern worldwide," said Suphajee Suthumpun, Country General Manager of IBM Thailand said. "But no vaccine or drug treatments are available now.  Continued research is needed so that scientists can better understand these viruses and then develop treatments that could save many lives.  This is why this project is critical".

According to the Ministry of Public Health, Dengue Fever was first found in Thailand in 1950 with a wide spread epidemic around Bangkok and Thonburi areas in 1958.  Since then, Dengue Fever has been reaching the epidemic proportions this year.  From January to August 18 this year,  36,082 people in the country have been infectedResearchers estimate that this project will need about 50,000 years of computational power. 

Running on World Community Grid, the project will be completed in approximately one year.  The more computer power volunteered, the faster the research will be conducted.

Lead researcher of the project, Dr. Stan Watowich, says, "Without World Community Grid, we would have to make more assumptions to do our research in a reasonable amount of time.  World Community Grid enables us to run significantly more precise calculations leading to more accurate results, and therefore better chances for us to discover a drug that can help stop these serious worldwide diseases."

The first phase of the project will target the proteins that enable the virus to replicate and will match them against a database of six million drug molecules that might inhibit the replication.  The second phase, which is more difficult, will analyse which of the drug molecules actually bind tightly to the protein, so that it does, in fact, inhibit replication.  From this, researchers will walk away with several dozen molecules that they can begin testing in the laboratory, which is the next phase of new drug development. 

 

"Anyone with a computer and Internet access can be a part of the solution to address this very critical health concern," said Suphajee.  "Simply by donating our unused computer cycle time, we can all have a profound effect on how quickly this team can move to the next phase of drug discovery.  For example, if 100,000 volunteers sign up within the first week for this project, it could reduce the time required to complete calculations by 50 percent."

To donate their unused computer time to this project, individuals register on www.worldcommunitygrid.org and install a free, small software program on to their computers.  When the computer is idle, for example a user is at lunch, their computers request data from World Community Grid's server.  These computers then perform computations using this data, and send the results back to the server, prompting it for a new piece of work.  A screen saver will tell individuals when their computers are being used.

For this project, Dr. Watowich worked with the Lanier Middle School, based in Houston, Texas, to develop a special screen saver based on writings of more than 100 students.  The student's writings focus on how to make the world a better place, complementing the humanitarian focus of the research project and World Community Grid.  Dr. Watowich said he wanted students to understand the impact of research, give students the feeling of empowerment, and show them they can make a difference by volunteering. 

World Community Grid, the largest public humanitarian grid in existence, has an impressive 315,000-plus members and taps into more than 700,000 devices. However, it's estimated that there are one billion devices available today.

Seven projects have been run on World Community Grid to date, including FightAIDS@Home, which completed five years of HIV/AIDS research in just six months.  Additional projects are in the pipeline.

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