Researchers have uncovered a new avenue to fight HIV by harnessing the collective strength of over a million everyday personal computers from around the world.
Based in the US, a team of researchers from the Scripps Research Institute has found two new substances to fight the ever-evolving mutations of HIV through this technology.
The FightAIDS@Home project is a joint venture with the Scripps Institute and IBM’s World Community Grid: a global network of PCs used to perform calculations for research teams free-of-charge.
Since 2005, the team has been working towards innovative ways to combat the development of HIV protease: an enzyme used by the virus to create new, infectious viral particles.
HIV uses enzymes to force human cells to produce many copies of the virus to further infect other cells.
Most HIV drugs block the operation of one or more of these enzymes.
Because HIV mutates so frequently, some drugs that inhibit the enzyme from replicating are no longer working or working as effectively.
So the Scripps researchers have been looking for new compounds to develop drugs that target more parts of the mutant enzyme for a more effective treatment.
Assisted by the extraordinary number-crunching power of the World Community Grid, Professor Arthur J. Olsen said this research would have been impossible without this technology.
‘The World Community Grid is a computational network provided by volunteers around the world, allowing scientists to use their computers when they are not,’ Olsen said.
‘Needless to say, this type of work would have been impossible without the resources of the World Community Grid.’
Olsen said the research has been significantly sped up with the help of the World Community Grid, having run over 100,000 years of computer processor time in their research to date.
‘Without the computational power of World Community Grid, it would have taken us many more years to get to this important step in our research,’ he said.
‘This computing power has enabled us to evaluate many millions of chemical compounds to help us discover new ways to disable the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and to prevent the evolution of drug resistance in HIV (positive) patients who are currently failing conventional therapies.
‘Currently there are over one and a half million devices that have joined World Community Grid, making it one of the largest distributed computing environments in the world.’
The Grid is currently hosted and operated by IBM to support humanitarian research projects. Check it out at www.worldcommunitygrid.org
Benn Dorrington
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