United Devices Cancer Research Project
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Image:United Devices.PNG The United Devices Cancer Research Project, is one of several distributed computing projects that have been operated on the grid.org website by United Devices.
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Cancer Research Project
The United Devices Cancer Research Project which began in 2001, is seeking possible drugs for the treatment of cancer using distributed computer power. There are around 150,000 users in the United States and 170,000 in Europe, along with hundreds of thousands more in other parts of the world.
The projects is an alliance of several companies and organisations
- United Devices Inc.
- National Foundation for Cancer Research
- University of Oxford Department of Chemistry
- Intel (no longer participating)
- Microsoft (no longer participating)
- Donors of molecular research
United Devices released the cancer research screensaver under the principle of utilising spare computing power. The program, which can also be set to run continually, uses "virtual screening" to find possible interactions between molecules and target proteins, i.e. a drug. These molecules (ligands) are sent to the host computer's UD Agent. When these molecules dock successfully with a target protein this interaction is scored for further investigation.
Phase 1 has been completed and Phase 2 is underway. In Phase 1, over 3 billion drug-like molecules were tested against 12 proteins which are known as suitable targets for anti-cancer drugs. It used the "THINK" software for the simulation of the molecular interactions.
Phase 2, using the "LigandFit" software developed by Accelrys to model interactions, seeks to refine the Phase 1 data to produce a more manageable list of drug candidates for testing which will require experimental collaborators including some from industry.
Human Proteome Folding Project
The Human Proteome Folding Project was announced on November 16, 2004 as a joint partnership between United Devices and IBM. In order to accommodate the large number of expected participants, the project would be operated simultaneously on both the grid.org servers and on IBM's World Community Grid servers.
It makes use of the "Rosetta" software to predict the structure of human proteins, in order to help predict the function of proteins. This information may someday be used to help cure a variety of diseases and genetic defects.
Past projects
Anthrax Project
The Anthrax Research Project was a part of the United Devices "Patriot Grid" initiative to fight biological terrorism. It made use of the "LigandFit" software (that had already been used by phase 2 of the Cancer Research project), but with a specialized set of target moleculated that targeted the advanced stages of anthrax bacterial infection.
The project was operated from January 22, 2002 until February 14, 2002, after a total of 3.57 billion molecules had finished screening. The results of the research project were transmitted to biological scientists in order to finish the screening of the computational simulations.[1]
The partners of the project included Oxford University.
Smallpox Project
The Smallpox Research Grid was a part of United Devices "Patriot Grid" initiative to fight biological terrorism. It made use of the "LigandFit" software (that had already been used by phase 2 of the Cancer Research project), but with a specialized set of target molecules that targeted the smallpox virus.
The partners of the project included University of Oxford, the University of Western Ontario, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Center, Essex University, Evotec OAI, Accelrys, and IBM.
HMMER Project
The HMMER Genetic Research project made use of the Hidden Markov model to search for patterns in genetic DNA sequences. [2]
Webload Project
The Web Performance Testing project was operated as a commercial opportunity with select web hosting providers in order to help them test the scalability of their server infrastructures under periods of high-demand. [3]