World Community Grid - New Project, Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together
Jenn's Uncle
World Community Grid has a new project called "Discovering Dengue
Drugs - Together". This project is working on drugs to combat West
Nile virus which effects us here in the US.
If you have logged on into WCG for a while, you should update the
projects you want to work on. Currently I have Dengue and Human
Proteome Folding 2 selected for my projects. Be sure to update BOINC
if you haven't done so in a while. Below is a summary on the new
project.
Mission
The mission of Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together is to identify
promising drug leads to combat the related dengue, hepatitis C, West
Nile, and Yellow fever viruses. The extensive computing power of World
Community Grid will be used to complete the structure-based drug
discovery calculations required to identify these leads.
Significance
This project will discover promising drug leads that stop the
replication of viruses within the Flaviviridae family. Members of this
family, including dengue, hepatitis C, West Nile, and Yellow fever
viruses, pose significant health threats throughout the developed and
developing world. More than 40% of the world's population is at risk
for infection by dengue virus. Annually, 1.5 million people are
treated for dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever. Hepatitis C
virus has infected ~2% of the world's population. Yellow fever and
West Nile viruses have also had significant global impact.
Unfortunately, there are no drugs that effectively treat these
diseases. Consequently, the supportive care necessary to treat these
infections and minimize mortality severely strains already burdened
health facilities throughout the world. The discovery of both broad-
spectrum and specific antiviral drugs is expected to significantly
improve global health.