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June 26, 2002
An Update on the Cancer Research Project from United Devices
Thanks to the continued dedication of our project Members, the Intel-United Devices-NFCR Cancer Research project proved more successful then we could ever have anticipated. It was so successful that we will begin a second phase of the project shortly to continue this groundbreaking research. The first phase, using the THINK application to identify key "hits", is complete. The second phase will further refine these initial hits by running them through a different application called LigandFit.
United Devices is still working in partnership with the National Foundation for Cancer Research, Oxford University and Dr. Graham Richards. His team will continue to receive the results and work diligently to advance cancer research. During this transition time, Members will notice the new application running, evidenced by a new name and graphics. Otherwise, we are simply continuing the same research with the ultimate goal of finding more effective drugs with few side effects to fight cancer.
We would like to thank Keith Davies, author of THINK, for all his contributions to this project.
A word from Dr. Graham Richards on the science behind the project:
"The screen saver project has been an enormous success. It has involved well over a million and a half personal computers in more than two hundred countries, yielding in excess of 200,000 years of CPU time. With such power it has proved possible to screen three and a half billion molecules against a range of cancer targets and, in a three week burst, against the anthrax toxin.
Now we can look to the future and use this incredible power to extend the project using computationally more demanding but more reliable methods. The THINK software has the virtue of incredible speed with a very light demand on data transfer. We now intend to use the more sophisticated LigandFit software, an improvement made possible by virtue of the power that the user community has made available. We believe that the scoring function, which indicates just how good hits are likely to be, is more accurate than the crude but fast methods used hitherto. Our obvious next step is to take the lists of hits generated so far and to run them by the newer software so as to generate a smaller list of more accurately generated hits, thus leading to a more tractable set of potential drugs to synthesize and test."
现在用的是LigandFit而不是THINK了。
LigandFit的优点是可以generate a smaller list of more accurately generated hits, thus leading to a more tractable set of potential drugs to synthesize and test。
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