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Active Distributed Computing Projects - Life Sciences

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Project Information Project % Complete Major Supported Platforms
Compute Against Cancer Help Compute Against Cancer fight cancer. The project is supporting the following research projects:
  • Microarray Gene Expression Patterns - a gene expression analysis
  • Patient Quality of Life - an exhaustive regression analysis to identify the specific factors that ease the suffering of chemotherapy recipients
  • Protein Folding - a study of the molecular dynamics of protein folding to create greater understanding of the behavior of cancer cells and how they interact with potential new treatments

The project runs on the Parabon Computation Frontier Compute Engine platform. To participate in the project, download and run the project's secure Java client. As of January 15, 2007, the client is available for Windows (XP/Vista/2000), Linux (2.4 kernel or higher), and Mac OSX (version 10.2 or later).

unknown Windows 32
Linux
MacOS
Folding@home Folding@home is another volunteer project that uses a screensaver or client application based on the Mithral CS-SDK to simulate protein folding in an effort to better understand how proteins self-assemble or fold. Intel supports this project through its Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program. You can see what projects are currently running on the current projects page. As of version 3.0, the software client also supports the Genome@Home project. See the project's latest news (last updated August 6, 2004). The site has been translated into many different languages. The project celebrated its tenth anniversary on October 1, 2010.

On October 21, 2002, the project announced that it achieved its initial goal: to "simulate the folding dynamics of proteins and make quantitative predictions for how [protein folding] works. This has been a 'holy grail' of computational biology." Specifically, the project simulated the folding of a man-made chain of 23 amino acids called BBA5. The simulation's measurements and folding-time matched physical measurements and folding-time of the protein observed in a lab. The achievement was published in the November, 2002, edition of Nature, in an article titled "Absolute comparison of simulated and experimental protein-folding dynamics." In October and November, 2004, the project's lead developer and research scientist, Guha Jayachandran, won the top award at the 2004 Biomedical Computation at Stanford (bcats) conference, and Vijay Pande has been named a 2004 Technovator.

On January 10, 2003, the project broke the 90,000 active CPU mark. On October 10, 2003, it broke the 120,000 active CPU mark. On April 24, 2004, it broke the 150,000 active CPU mark. On September 9, 2004, it broke the 1,000,000 total CPUs and 100 TFLOPs marks. On January 14, 2005, it broke the 170,000 actuve CPU mark. On September 20, 2005, it broke the 200,000 active CPU mark.

On November 28, 2001, the project began studies (110 and 5100) on Alzheimer's Disease. On May 8, 2002, the project began studies (503 and 504) on Huntington's Disease, a disease similar to Alzheimer's Disease in that it is caused by protein misfolding. See a list of all of the project's current studies. In June, 2002, the project started using the Gromacs molecular dynamics modeling software. This software allows the project to simulate larger proteins more accurately and much more quickly than the previous software. As of August 12, 2002, the Gromacs software has successfully modeled one of the simpler molecules, project 902, and shows a lot of promise for success with larger molecules. On March 27, 2003, the project began studying several new types or work units, including NTL9 (a protein with both beta and alpha structure) and 1PRB (a three-helix bundle). The project also increased the scope of its trpzip investigation to include a fourth variant trpzip4. On April 23, 2004, it published the first results from its Gromacs core. On August 20, 2004, the project began its P130x projects: these projects have work units much larger than normal, and require users to have hundreds of MB of RAM and be able to transfer 5 MB of data for each result, but the work units have 50% more value in stats. On October 12, 2004, the project released a new AMBER (Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement) core which will allow it to do things that it can't with its existing Tinker and Gromacs cores. See the AMBER core FAQ. On January 15, 2005, the project published the results of its p53 tumor suppressor study, part of its cancer research project. These results are "the first peer-reviewed results from a distributed computing project related to cancer." On December 22, 2009, the project released a new core (Protomol core B4), which implements "the NML (Normal Mode Langevin) method" of protein folding simulation. If it is successful, this method could be up to one hundred times faster than previous cores.

On September 18, 2008, the project released an updated version of its PlayStation 3 client, now included in a Life With PlayStation feature on the PlayStation 3 console, which does more complex scientific calculations and which displays a more detailed globe, with weather and news reports for major cities plus a real-time map of cloud cover over the globe.

On February 18, 2009, the project passed the 5 PetaFLOPs mark. At that time traditional supercomputers were just passing the 1 PetaFLOPs mark. "The use of GPU's and Cell processors is has been key to this, and in fact the NVIDIA numbers alone have just passed 2 petaflops."

On January 17, 2010, the project announced it successfully achieved the first protein folding simulation on a millisecond timescale. This achievement is 1,000 times more difficult than the project's initial goal of simulation millisecond timescale simulation. The project published its 72d paper, Molecular Simulation of ab Initio Protein Folding for a Millisecond Folder NTL9(1-39), about the achievement.

On June 27, 2010, the project published a paper, "Atomic-Resolution Simulations Predict a Transition State for Vesicle Fusion Defined by Contact of a Few Lipid Tails," describing the project's "work on the mechanism for vesicle fusion," an important part of the process in which a virus infects a cell. Learning about this mechanism will help scientists better understand how the influenza virus enters cells.

On November 18, 2011, the project owners announced they have developed the new Copernicus framework to utilize supercomputers efficiently for protein folding simulations.

On February 27, 2020, the project began research into the COVID-19 coronavirus, which caused a worldwide pandemic. "2019-nCoV is a close cousin to SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and acts in a similar way."

Version 7.6.13 of the client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of April 17, 2020. It allows volunteers to prioritize COVID-19 projects.

Students and teachers should see the Education@Home section of the site.

See the research papers and articles published from the results of this project.

See Professor Pande's February 19, 2004, talk at Xerox PARC: Folding@Home: Can a grid of 100,000 CPUs tackle fundamental barriers in molecular simulation? Windows Media Player is required to view the video.

See independently-maintained hourly team and user stats for this project at statsman.org.

See an independent support site for helpful hints about participating in this project.

See the original Folding@Home project.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

Join a discussion forum about the original project.

Join an independent discussion forum about ab-initio protein folding (where the folding is simulated completely in software)

To participate in the project, follow the instructions on the project website to download and install the software client application. To participate in the project with your Chrome web browser, read information about the browser application, then open this URL in your Chrome browser: http://folding.stanford.edu/nacl/. The software client automatically downloads and then runs until you close the browser.

ongoing Windows 32
Linux
MacOS
Solaris
PS3
fightAIDS@home Help design new drugs to fight AIDS at fightAIDS@home. The project is sponsored by the non-profit Scripps Research Institute. The project website site is also available in Chinese Chinese. The project published the first volume of its FightAIDS@Home News on January 24, 2006.

The project completed Phase I on May 21, 2003 (in this phase, almost 60,000 computers completed 1,400 years of computing to process over 9 million tasks).

"[Phase I] has ably demonstrated that with such massive computational abilities, researchers can utilize intensive approaches to identify drug candidates that succumb to resistance mutations and those that are more resilient to such mutations. An early lead developed during Phase I, TL-3, has been shown to be promising against the drug resistant strains that have arisen from the currently approved HIV Protease inhibitors. The characteristics of TL-3 have been born out by the FAAH computational work."

The project began Phase II on May 21, 2003. Note that for Phase II, the project transfered completely to The Scripps Research Institute (and became a completely non-profit project) and Entropia is no longer involved. You will need to reregister and download a new client to participate in Phase II. You can learn more about the project through articles it published on January 19 and January 26, 2004:
The Resistance Part I: From Petri Dishes to Population Dynamics
The Resistance Part II: Fighting HIV Resistance At Home and in the Laboratory.
For Phase II, the project has completed 4 experiments so far. Experiment 1a tested almost 1,900 compounds (of a possible 200,000) available from the National Institutes of Health against "a panel of 270 variations of the HIV protease structure" for a total of 513,000 experiments. Experiment 1a ended in April, 2006. Experiment 1b docked "all 200,000 compounds in the NIH library against the ‘wild-type’ HIV protease." That experiment ended in June, 2006. Experiment 2 completed the following tests: ChemBridge (500,000) vs. Wild Type HIV Protease (1); Top Hits from Experiment 1 vs. Mutant HIV Protease Panel (270); NCI Diversity Set (1,900) vs. Monomeric HIV Protease (20). It began in June, 2006, and end later in 2006. Experiment 3 tested Sidechain Motion in HIV Protease Cross Dockings. It ended in late 2006. Experiment 4 tested NCI Diversity Set vs. HIV PR Monomer. It ended in late 2006. Experiment 5 is testing BindingDB vs. HIV Protease, with and without Active Site Water Molecule. On October 21, 2011 the project owners announced the project had discovered two new protein fragments which are able to bind to two important sites on the HIV protease (the HIV virus) and may be able to prevent the virus, and "superbug" (drug-resistant) variations of the virus, from functioning normally. These protein fragments may be able to be developed into more effective HIV-fighting drugs.

On February 3, 2010, the project announced it found two compounds that make a completely new class of AIDS-fighting drugs possible: "two compounds that act on novel binding sites for an enzyme used by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS. The discovery lays the foundation for the development of a new class of anti-HIV drugs to enhance existing therapies, treat drug-resistant strains of the disease, and slow the evolution of drug resistance in the virus."

The project began Experiment 33 on June 3, 2010 and completed it on December 1, 2010. This was the first experiment to target the HIV integrase system. The experiment screened over 360,000 protein fragments and some larger compounds "against our new dynamic models of the E92Q/N155H drug-resistant mutant of HIV-1 integrase," searching for compounds which can attach to brand new binding sites on this mutant.

The project began Experiment 34 on October 11, 2010. It is the second experiment which targets the HIV integrase system. The experiment is "screening the 'full National Cancer Institute's (NCI) library' of over 315,000 different compounds against our new dynamic models of the wild type, the G140S/Q148H drug-resistant mutant, and the E92Q/N155H drug-resistant mutant of HIV-1 integrase. We are trying to discover compounds that can bind to and inhibit the active site of the wild type and these two drug-resistant mutants."

The project began Experiment 35 on November 26, 2010. This project involves "involves screening the full NCI library of ~ 316,000 compounds against the active site of 8 different versions of HIV protease." It is similar to Experiment 32, "but a different library of compounds is being screened, and one new target has been added."

The project published Volume 10 of its newsletter on October 21, 2011. Dr. Alex Perryman of the project also created a YouTube video clip which gives a general summary of the project. Newsletter Volume 12 waspublished on November 18, 2013.

On November 19, 2005, the project joined the World Community Grid. The original software client is not supported as of that date. Users of the original client can follow easy migration instructions to move to the World Community Grid client, and World Community Grid participants can follow the directions on the new download page to ensure their client is participating in fightAIDS@home. A BOINC client for Linux should be available soon.

97,736,624 results returned;
experiment 5: 50%
Windows 32
Virtual Lab Help screen molecules to design drugs to fight diseases in The Virtual Laboratory Project. This project does not work in the way that traditional projects do. Instead of downloading a software client and having it get work assignments, you set up Globus grid computing software on your system and then make your system available to the World Wide Grid (WWG), a global computing grid. Then the Virtual Lab project coordinators can schedule computations on your system at their convenience. Because of this setup, this project is best for users with permanent Internet connections. For this project, the coordinators use their grid scheduler, called Nimrod-G, to deploy their Nimrod-G agents on your machine to do the molecule screening. Their view of the project looks like this.

See a white paper about this process: The Virtual Laboratory: Enabling Molecular Modeling, and a PhD thesis. The biology collaborator working on this project has already designed a drug to counteract an ECE enzyme involved in heart stroke, and is currently using the Virtual Laboratory to study liver cancer.

See another white paper by the project coordinators: Grids and Grid Technologies for Wide-Area Distributed Computing.

Note: this project is currently only for Linux/Unix users. Windows is not supported yet.

ongoing Linux
Solaris
World Community Grid Help predict protein structures from human genome sequence data in Human Proteome Folding. The project is a partnership among World Community Grid, the Institute for Systems Biology, the University of Washington at Seattle, and IBM. The project uses the Rosetta software package, developed by The Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington, to predict protein structures for proteins in the human genome. "Understanding the complete set of human proteins, what their structures are and how they interact in the human body is a hugely important scientific problem that could lead to treatments for a myriad of human diseases." Rosetta could require up to 1,000,000 years of computation on a current (as of November, 2004) PC to examine the entire human genome. Phase I of the project was completed in in June, 2006. Phase II began on June 23, 2006. Also see grid.org's information about the project.

The project's results database was first accessed by researchers on September 26, 2005.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based projects by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

26,044,374 results returned Windows 32
Rosetta@home Help Rosetta@home "predict and design protein structures, and protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions," in order to "develop methods that accurately predict and design protein structures and complexes, an endeavor that may ultimately help researchers develop cures for human diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, and malaria." This project, run by The Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington, will help the lab improve its Rosetta software package, which is used by other projects such as Human Proteome Folding. The project published its latest Science News update on January 27, 2006. On March 20, 2008, the project successfully created two functional enzymes not found in nature. Designed enzymes could be used in the future to produce pharmaceuticals and fuel. On March 11, 2013, the project announced it discovered a new class of proteins that can be used as antidotes for drug overdoses and in sensors. On February 24, 2020, the project began research into the COVID-19 coronavirus, which caused a worldwide pandemic.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The BOINC client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Version 5.25 of the Rosetta application is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of June 20, 2006.

See a 7 minute YouTube video about the project. The video was created on January 7, 2007.

Join a discussion forum about the project.

ongoing; 8,262,355,343 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

RALPH@home Help RALPH@home test new application versions, work unit types, and other updates for Rosetta@home. This testing improves Rosetta@home.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The BOINC client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Join a discussion forum about the project.

ongoing; 27,649,840 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

SIMAP Help SIMAP compute similarities between all known protein sequences. "SIMAP is short for Similarity Matrix of Proteins. SIMAP is a database for the precomputed homologies of protein sequences and provides specialized retrieval tools for effective use of that data. The publicly available web based SIMAP presentation module provides various search tools." See a more detailed description of the project.

The project had over 10,000 hosts and 5,000 users with credits, and has calculated the similarities for more than 1 million protein sequences, as of March 22, 2006.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Version 5.11 of the SIMAP application is available for Linux as of July 17, 2006. Version 5.10 is available for Windows and Mac OSX as of July 12, 2006. Versions 5.6 and later reduce the calculation time per work unit to 1/10th that of previous versions. Dialup users should be aware that work units are about 1.5 MB and results are about 1.3 MB.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 654,667,609 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

Malaria Control Help malariacontrol.net simulate the ways that the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum malaria) spreads in Africa, and its effects on human health. The models it creates will help scientists and doctors "determine optimal strategies for delivering mosquito nets, chemotherapy, or new vaccines which are currently under development and testing." This project is part of the Africa@home project.

On September 17, 2007, the project began testing a third science application called optimizer. This application is run as a test application, "meaning that only users who have 'run test applications' and 'run optimizer application' checked in their account settings (under malariacontrol.net preferences) will get work, and only Windows users will get work. Results from the optimizer application are helping the project team "to improve the main malariacontrol application in the future."

As of March 1, 2010, the project is preparing new work units for its next phase of research.

In October, 2008, the project published its first results, a paper titled What Should Vaccine Developers Ask? Simulation of the Effectiveness of Malaria Vaccines.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. See the project's Applications page for a list of the project's current applications and versions.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 581,696,570 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

TANPAKU Help TANPAKU predict protein structures. "The project name 'TANPAKU' is taken from the Japanese word tanpaku-shitsu, meaning protein." See a more detailed description of the project. The project website is also available in Japanese .

Note: The project's server accidentally went down on August 18, 2008. The project team is repairing the server. The project is on hold in the meantime.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Version 5.99 of the BD client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of October 1, 2007.

on hold dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

Docking@Home Help Docking@Home find better ways to discover disease-fighting drugs and to study ways to adapt the discovery process based on iterative results from the project. The project "aims to accomplish both bioscience and computer science goals. From the bioscience point of view, the project aims to further knowledge of the atomic details of protein-ligand interactions and, by doing so, will search for insights into the discovery of novel pharmaceuticals. From the computer science point of view, this project aims to extend volunteer computing to enable adaptive multi-scale modeling of the docking applications: different models that represent the same phenomena in nature with different level of accuracy and resource requirements will be chosen at run-time based on results collected so far and characteristics of the protein-ligand complex." See more information about the project.

The project's first research project was "complex 1HVI: the Hiv-1 protease complexed with the inhibitor A77003." On September 10, 2008, it began researching "model 13sc. This model keeps track of the ligand structure, enabling the study of initial conditions in our simulations."

The project began its public Beta test on September 3, 2008, and opened public account registration on September 8, 2008.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The project is currently in Beta testing. See the project's Applications page for a list of the project's current applications and versions.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 385,326,191 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

proteins@home Help proteins@home solve the "inverse protein folding problem" (enumerating the allowed sequences for a given fold) for a large number of known protein folds. The project is studying a representative subset of about 1,500 folds. See more information about the project.

The project team published its first paper, "Computational protein design: Software implementation, parameter optimization, and performance of a simple model," on December 10, 2007.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The project is currently in Alpha testing. Version 7.41 of the Xplor client is available for Windows as of February 1, 2008.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy World Community Grid Help the World Community Grid and Décrypthon find better treatments for muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases. The project is "investigating protein-protein interactions for 40,000 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for [these] diseases." There is currently no cure for people affected by these diseases. See more information about the project. See a progress page (written in French) for the project.

Phase 1 of the project performed cross-docking calculations on over 150 proteins, to see how well each protein iteracts with each of the other proteins. See more information about Phase 1. This phase ended on June 11, 2007. In the 7 months that Phase 1 ran, "106,000 members will have donated more than 8,000 years of computer time on 154,000 different computers," and computed 5,416,082 results. Phase 2 should begin in 2008. Phase 2 began in May, 2009. It is "investigating protein-protein interactions for more than 2,200 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases." See more information about Phase 2. Phase 2 is ending in October, 2012. As of January 9, 2013, the project has captured all of the possible molecular and atomic connections among 2,280 human proteins "known to mutate and induce different forms of neuromuscular disorders, including Muscular Dystrophy."

See the project's Phase 1 FAQ and Phase 2 FAQ.

The project uses the World Community Grid computing platform. Participants are encouraged to participate through World Community Grid. See World Community Grid platform information for the latest version of these platform clients. The clients are currently available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Please review the clients' system requirements.

Join a discussion forum about World Community Grid's projects.

5,416,082 results returned for Phase 1; 32,225,585 results returned for Phase 2 dialup-friendly

Windows 32

Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together World Community Grid Help Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together, a World Community Grid project, "identify promising drug leads to combat the related dengue, hepatitis C, West Nile, and Yellow fever viruses." See more information about the project and the project's FAQ.

The project completed Phase 1 (a screening process for over 3 million potential drug molecules) on August 26, 2009. Project participants contributed over 12,000 years of computing time to Phase 1. The results of Phase 1 benefit research not only for Dengue Fever but also for Hepatitis C, West Nile, Yellow Fever and other diseases caused by the Flaviviridea family of viruses. Phase 2 will perform more in-depth analysis on the best candidates found in Phase 1. The best candidates found in Phase 2 will be tested in labs.

The project began Phase 2 on March 23, 2010. This phase is reducing the number of "false positive" (i.e. dead end) results from phase 1. On November 10, 2014, the project announced it found a promising drug candidate that has the potential to prevent the virus from replicating. It may also disable similar flaviviruses like West Nile virus.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based projects by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

25,609,575 results returned dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

The Lattice Project Help The Lattice Project study various problems in bioinformatics. This project is the first to combine private computing grids (based on the Globus platform) and a public distributed computing infrastructure (based on the BOINC platform). Note that the BOINC client is part of a general-purpose computing grid and may be supporting one of several different projects at any given time. See more information about the project and the project FAQ.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Versions 5.09, 5.10, 5.11 and 5.12 of the GARLI client are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of December 18, 2007. Version 5.05, 5.06 and 5.10 of the HMMPfam client are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of December 18, 2007. Version 5.02 of the MARXAN client is available for Windows as of December 18, 2007.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 56,890,702 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

POEM@HOME Help POEM@HOME research and predict protein structure. The project uses a computational approach to:
  • predict the biologically active structure of proteins
  • understand the signal-processing mechanisms when the proteins interact with one another
  • understand diseases related to protein malfunction or aggregation
  • develop new drugs on the basis of the three-dimensions structure of biologically important proteins.
See more information about the project.

This project participated in the CASP8 protein structure prediction contest, which occured between May 5, 2008 and August 1, 2008. Results from the contest were released at the CASP meeting on December 3-7, 2008, and were published at PlanetBOINC.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Versions 0.07 of the POEM Protein Folding application is available for Windows as of November 29, 2007. Version 0.08 is available for Linux and Mac OS X as of January 11, 2008.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 850,873,361 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux
MacOS

Help Conquer Cancer World Community Grid Help Help Conquer Cancer, a World Community Grid project, "improve the results of protein X-ray crystallography, which helps researchers not only annotate unknown parts of the human proteome, but importantly improves their understanding of cancer initiation, progression and treatment." See more information about the project and the project's FAQ.

As of June 15, 2010, the project has sifted through more than 100 million images of 12,500 unique proteins which may be linked to cancer. These pictures were taken during 19.2 million experiments. This project allows scientists to get results six times faster than by using traditional methods.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based projects by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

52,485,470 results returned dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

Help Cels@Home "do research in cell adhesion. One of the many applications of this is in cancer research, as the point at which cancerous cells quit staying in place, and instead break free to move throughout the body, is a critical event that makes the disease much harder to treat."

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Versions 1.00 of the Cels@Home application is available for Windows as of February 25, 2008.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 19,257,730 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32

MindModeling@Home Help MindModeling@Home use "computational cognitive process modeling to better understand the human mind." The project hopes to "improve on the scientific foundations that explain the mechanisms and processes that enable and moderate human performance and learning." The project is not yet active as of April 2, 2008, but participants can help beta test it.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Versions 3.00 of the project's client application is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X as of March 5, 2008.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

Join a discussion forum about the beta test project.

ongoing; 17,589,036 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32

Help UCT : malariacontrol.net test the correct operation of the malariacontrol.net server for future BOINC-based projects. This project is a test project in collaboration with malariacontrol.net. This project is in a test mode. Participation is currently limited to a few hundred participants.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Versions 5.57 of the project's malariacontrol client application is available for Windows and Linux as of April 17, 2008.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; 17,616,564,009 credits dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

Help Fight Childhood Cancer World Community Grid Help Help Fight Childhood Cancer, a project by World Community Grid and scientists at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute and Chiba University, "find drugs that can disable three particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma, one of the most frequently occurring solid tumors in children." See more information about the project and the project's FAQ. The project completed work on its first three drug targets on June 10, 2010, earlier than expected. On February 20, 2014 the project announced a breakthrough in the fight against childhood cancer: with the help of 200,000 volunteers the project screened over 3 million potential drug compounds and found seven promising drug candidates to fight neuroblastoma. The project published a paper about the results.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

73,581,917 results returned dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

Influenza Antiviral Drug Research World Community Grid Help Influenza Antiviral Drug Research, a project by World Community Grid and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), "find new drugs that can stop the spread of an influenza infection in the body. The research will specifically address the influenza strains that have become drug resistant as well as new strains that are appearing. Identifying the chemical compounds that are the best candidates will accelerate the efforts to develop treatments that would be useful in managing seasonal influenza outbreaks, and future influenza epidemics and even pandemics." See the project's FAQ.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

3,848,181 results returned dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

Help DrugDiscovery@Home "model the behavior of leading compounds that could be developed into new medicines." The project "is in an early alpha phase and does not have a formal relationship with academia or the pharmaceutical industry."

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. See the project's applications page for a list of its clients, their latest versions, and the platforms they are available for.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing; unknown credits dialup-friendly

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Help DNA@Home "discover what regulates the genes in Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA). This project, based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, uses statisical algorithms to find out how certain genes (sections of DNA) are turned on and off during transcription, the process in which proteins are created from DNA code.

The project's first task is to study the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis genome. Understanding how the genome makes the tuberculosis disease work will allow scientists to stop the disease more effectively. The project also plans to study Yersinia pestis, the cause of bubonic plague.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The project's "Gibbs sampler" client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing;
unknown credits
Windows 32
Linux
MacOS
RNA World Help RNA World study Ribonucleic Acid (RNA). The project's goal is to "identify, analyze, structurally predict and design RNA molecules on the basis of established bioinformatics software in a high-performance, high-throughput fashion." See more information about the project.

The project's first goal is to systematically identify all known RNA family members in all organisms currently known and to make the information available to the public. The project will also run sub-projects submitted by RNA researchers.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

ongoing;
unknown credits
Windows 32
Linux
MacOS
Drug Search for Leishmaniasis World Community Grid Help Drug Search for Leishmaniasis, a project by World Community Grid and scientists in PECET (the Program for the Study and Control of Tropical Diseases) at the University of Antioquia in Colombia, find potential drugs to treat Leishmaniasis, a tropical disease which affects over 2 million people, in 97 countries, each year. See more information about the project and the project's FAQ.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

3,548,846 results returned dialup-friendly

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GO Fight Against Malaria World Community Grid Help GO Fight Against Malaria, a project by World Community Grid find potential drugs to treat drug-resistant forms of Malaria, a mosquito-born disease for which 3 billion people are at risk of being infected. year. See more information about the project and the project's FAQ.

The project published a project update on July 14, 2014. Part 1 of the project completed 1.16 billion docking calculations (the first distributed computing project to complete over 1 billion docking calculations) and tested 5.6 million potential drug compounds against 22 different malaria drug targets ("and against some targets for treating drug-resistant tuberculosis, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), filariasis, and bubonic plague, when the targets from those other pathogens had structural similarity to the targets from malaria"). The projhect posted an update on February 11, 2015.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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Help Social Docking find potential drugs to treat Alzheimer's and AIDS. This project "is the first attempt ever to attempt virtual screening of Massive Compound Libraries entirely using JavaScript." The script "runs a Metropolis Monte Carlo Search with the ligand constrained to a binding site in the target. Enthalpy is calculated using the General Amber Force Field and Entropy is considered by taking the average of the Boltzmann distribution (how well the ligand 'tumbles down' the energy hypersurface)."

To participate in the project, open the project's URL in your HTML5-enabled web browser. The project runs a script in the background when you leave the web page open in your browser (you can view other web pages in other tabs) and exits the script when you exit the project web page. The script completes one work unit (a test of one ligand against three receptors) in about 10 minutes. Note: after a few minutes your web browser may display a message saying that a script is taking to long to complete and asking if you want to allow the script to run or to stop the script. Allow the script to run.

The project is the first to make use of HTML5 web workers (long-running scripts that run in the background and are not interrupted by user-interface scripts or user inputs). It also uses XmlHttpRequest level 2 (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)) and WebGL math libraries.

ongoing dialup-friendly

Windows 32
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NEW!
Say No to Schistosoma World Community Grid Help Say No to Schistosoma, a project by World Community Grid, find potential drugs to treat schistosomiasis, "a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms that are transmitted by freshwater snails. The disease kills 200,000 people each year and affects over 207 million people. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its socioeconomic devastation. Researchers at the Infórium University in Belo Horizonte and FIOCRUZ-Minas, Brazil, are using World Community Grid to search for chemical compounds which may lead to new drugs for treating the disease." See the project team's website, more information about the project, and the project's FAQ.

As of October 22, 2012, ten compounds discovered by the project are being tested in vitro (in a lab) and 16 more potential compounds are being evaluated for testing. The most promising candidate is a compound based on Digoxin. The project coordinators also participated in the 13th International Symposium on Schistosomiasis.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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FightMalaria@Home Ireland Help FightMalaria@Home discover more effective drugs to fight Malaria, a disease which infects 216 million people--and kills 650,000 people--every year. The project's first goal is to dock (i.e. to fit) each of 18,924 potential drugs already discovered by other organizations into structures of each of the 5,363 proteins in the Malaria parasite and see which drug candidates dock best with each protein. See more information about the project and its idea. See the project's results.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client.

ongoing;
unknown credits
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Quantum Cures Help Quantum Cures discover potential drugs to fight "orphan" or rare diseases currently ignored by the pharmaceutical indistry. See more information about the project.

Note: As of March 1, 2013, this project is in development and is not currently active. The project is creating a client application to run on computers, tablets and smartphones around the world.

not yet active Windows 32
Linux
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Mapping Cancer Markers World Community Grid Help Mapping Cancer Markers, a project by World Community Grid, identify combinations of chemical markers which indicate specific types of cancer. Discovering these markers will help doctors detect cancer in patients sooner, identify high-risk patients sooner, and devise more effective treatments for cancer patients. See more information about the project, and the project's FAQ.

The project completed its first phase, a benchmark phase, on July 10, 2014. It processed over 26 million gene signatures to set a benchmark for future phases. The second phase will search for clinically useful molecular signatures, focusing on gene signatures that can predict the occurrence of various types of cancer. The project posted an update on February 12, 2015.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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Compute Against Alzheimer's Disease Help Compute Against Alzheimer's Disease fight Alzheimer's Disease, "a leading cause of death and dementia among the elderly, affecting nearly 40 million people worldwide. In addition to its devastating effect on patients and its emotional toll on their families, the societal costs of AD are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, yet there are no effective treatment options available today." This project will investigate specific aspects of the disease to help find better treatments and possibly a cure for it. See the project's FAQ and its blog.

The project is supporting the following research projects:

The project runs on the Parabon Computation Frontier Compute Engine platform. To participate in the project, download and run the project's secure Java client. As of June 6, 2014, the client is available for Windows (XP/Vista/7/8), Linux (2.4 kernel or higher), and Mac OSX (version 10.6 or later). Note that the project's client application is very resource-intensive. You can configure it to run at the same time you are using your computer but it will probably make the computer run very slowly for you. It is best to configure it to run only when you are not using the computer and when you are not running any other distributed computing project client applications.

unknown Windows 32
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NEW!
Uncovering Genome Mysteries World Community Grid Help Uncovering Genome Mysteries, a project by World Community Grid, "create and publish a database of protein sequence comparison information for all scientists to reference." These published DNA sequences will help scientists with:
  • Discovering new protein functions and augmenting knowledge about biochemical processes in general
  • Identifying how organisms interact with each other and the environment
  • Documenting the current baseline microbial diversity, allowing a better understanding of how microorganisms change under environmental stresses, such as climate change
  • Understanding and modeling complex microbial systems
Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology allow scientists to decode an organism's DNA rapidly and identify genes in the DNA sequences. Discovering the functions of those genes and the enzymes that those genes produce is still difficult. This project is "examining close to 200 million genes from a wide variety of life forms, such as microorganisms found on seaweeds from Australian coastlines and in the Amazon river. The predicted proteins they encode will be compared against each other to assess their similarity. When two proteins are similar, and the function of one protein is already known, this similarity allows scientists to make educated predictions about the function of the other." See more information about the project, and the project's FAQ.

The project posted an update on February 26, 2015. As of November, 2017, the project owners are analyzing 30 Terabytes of data produced by the project.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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Outsmart Ebola Together World Community Grid Help Outsmart Ebola Together, a project by World Community Grid, discover potential anti-viral drugs to fight the Ebola virus, a disease which kills up to 90% of its victims and for which there is currently no treatment or cure. "An antiviral treatment for Ebola could potentially also be used to treat related diseases in the filovirus family, including the Marburg, Sudan and Reston viruses." See more information about the project, and the project's FAQ.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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Help FiND@Home (Fight Neglected Diseases at Home), discover potential drugs to fight malaria and other diseases neglected by pharmaceutical companies. This project began as FightMalaria@Home: on January 6, 2015 it expanded to fight other diseases. See the project's FAQ.

Results from FightMalaria@Home (as of January 6, 2015):

"We have made a results website for easy access to the data we generated using the FM@H BOINC server. The first 400 MMV compounds (MalariaBox) data is available here: http://chemware.ucd.ie/FiNDaH/Malaria.php.

"We're still doing the last repeat calculations for the remaining MMV19k and other datasets, the results of which we'll add to this website. We'll also add the TB data to this site, once we've cleaned it up and added orthogonal scoring data.

"I had hoped to get the publication out prior to releasing this 'raw' data, but this is taking longer than I'd hoped. Once the paper is submitted I'll add a pre-print to the website also. The scoring functions will then make more sense.

"Thanks again for your generous contributions to this project.

"We're optimistic that someone, somewhere, will use this data to confirm our findings and provide the world with novel drugs... and new targets for further anti-malarial drug discovery."

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. See the project's Applications page for a list of its current applications and versions.

Join this project's discussion forum.

ongoing;
unknown credits
dialup-friendly

Windows 32
Linux

NEW!
OpenZika World Community Grid Help OpenZika, a project by World Community Grid, discover potential anti-viral drugs to fight the Zika virus, which can cause microcephaly, severe brain malformations, and other birth defects. See more information about the project, and the project's FAQ.

The project published a paper about its initial results on October 20, 2016.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based project by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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OpenPandemics World Community Grid Help OpenPandemics, a project by World Community Grid, discover potential treatments for current and future pandemics. The project team "also plans to develop tools and methods to help future drug discovery projects to ramp up more quickly. This could lead to faster and more effective research on potential treatments for future pandemics. And in accordance with World Community Grid's open data policy, these tools and the project results will be freely shared in the scientific community." See the project's FAQ and its latest news.

On May 14, 2020, the project started looking for treatments for the COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, which caused a worldwide pandemic.

The project uses the BOINC computing platform to run various applications. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. If you already have BOINC installed, you can join this and other World Community Grid BOINC-based projects by attaching to the project URL www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can select/de-select World Community Grid projects in your World Community Grid member page, under My Grid --> My Projects. See the system requirements for each project.

This project is discussed in the World Community Grid forums.

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The following icons may appear in the Supported Platforms section of the table:
dialup-friendlythis project is good for users with dialup Internet access
paid projectthis is a for-pay project
Windows 32this project runs on the Windows 32-bit platform
Linuxthis project runs on the Linux platform
MacOSthis project runs on the Mac OS platform
Solaristhis project runs on the Solaris platform

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