Cure Cancer?
Did you know? One in four people throughout the world will, on average, develop cancer. In excess of one in three people in the UK will, on average, suffer from cancer at some point in their life. |
Perhaps not. But did you know that anyone with a PC that connects to the Internet can help in a very real way, at virtually no cost or inconvenience? Read on...
Most people have been affected by cancer, either developing it themselves or had a close relative who has suffered. The mortality rate, the suffering and the costs of treatment all make cancer a top priority for drug research.
The Project
What you can do is join a unique research project by contributing spare processing time on your PC to drug research. The United Devices (UD) Cancer Research Project is a collaboration between Oxford University's Centre for Computational Drug Discovery and the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR).
It costs you virtually nothing - you just install the software on your PC and it runs in the background when your computer is otherwise idle. You can think of it as a screensaver. When the program runs, it processes a 'packet' of data. It takes about a day to process a single packet; when processing is complete it connects to the United Devices server to return the results and get another packet of work. If you aren't online when the processing completes, your PC will wait till you're next online to return the results.
What Exactly Will My PC Be Doing?
A cancer drug molecule can thwart a protein that facilitates the spread of cancer by 'latching' onto the protein at a key area, blocking its usual malignant functions as a result. In this way a drug can slow or even halt the spread of a tumour. The problem is finding the 'right' molecule for the job, and that's where you can help. By donating your PC's idle time you can help researchers by simulating the collisions between a large number of molecular fragments and the cancer proteins the researchers wish to attack. Fragments that make a better 'fit' upon collision make better candidates for further research.
The current project aims to test 35 million drug-like molecules plus 100 derivatives of each - i.e 3.5 billion molecules in total. The processing power needed to attack this problem is vast, but by using massive scale distributed processing as made possible with the United Devices project together with the donated spare processing time of millions of computers that would otherwise be doing nothing, its a managable task. To date over 2 million computers are participating in the project. You too can help...
LigandFit Software In Action. Reproduced With Permission of United Devices.
How To Join
- Click here to download the United Devices Agent software to your PC. Its a 1.6Mb download so doesn't take too long. Running the setup program will install the molecule fitting software and prompts you to enter a login name and password.
- Once you have the software up and running, point your browser to the Breeders Assistant Supporters Team page and click the Join This Team button. This will group your efforts with those of other Breeders Assistant users.
