IBM's World Community Grid hosts Scripps Research project to
help scientists virtually screen chemical compounds that might help
fight COVID-19
NEW YORK, April 1, 2020 /CNW/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today
announced that anyone in the world with a PC, laptop or Mac and an
Internet connection could help scientists seek chemical compounds
that might be effective against COVID-19.
To do so, volunteers' devices will perform small, virtual
experiments to identify chemical compounds, including those in
existing medicines, that could potentially be used as treatments
candidates for COVID-19. Compounds that show promise for treating
COVID-19 will undergo further testing and analysis.
The project, designed and led by Scripps Research, will be
hosted on IBM's World Community Grid, a trusted, crowdsourced
computing resource provided at no charge for scientists. Volunteers
download an app that works when their devices are otherwise idle or
in light use. Operating unobtrusively in the background without
slowing users' systems, the app distributes computational
assignments and returns completed calculations to researchers, all
via the IBM cloud.
Volunteers need not have any special technical expertise to
participate; the process is automatic. Personal information is
never shared, and the software cannot access personal or business
files. Please click here to sign up.
With IBM's World Community Grid crowdsourcing power from
thousands of computing devices, the project, called "OpenPandemics
- COVID-19," will easily be able perform hundreds of millions of
calculations needed for simulations. This could potentially help
scientists accelerate the drug discovery or drug re-purposing
process, traditionally performed more slowly in a traditional,
"wet" laboratory. As with all World Community Grid projects, data
generated by this effort will be made publicly available.
"IBM's World Community Grid is a resource that not only empowers
scientists to accelerate vital work on a large scale, but also
gives volunteers a sense of empowerment, joining with others all
over the globe to make a difference," said Guillermo Miranda, VP and head of corporate
social responsibility at IBM. "During a time of social distancing
and isolation, this sense of purpose and interconnectedness is as
important as ever."
While the project will initially focus on COVID-19, Scripps
Research also plans to develop tools and methods to allow future
drug discovery projects to ramp up quickly, such as during other
pandemics.
"Scripps Research is grateful to IBM for hosting our project on
World Community Grid," said Stefano
Forli, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of
Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps
Research, and director of the project. "Tapping the unused
processing power on thousands of idle computing devices provides us
with an incredible amount of computing power to virtually screen
millions of chemical compounds. Our joint effort with volunteers
all over the world promises to accelerate our search for new,
potential drug candidates that address present and future emerging
biological threats, whether it is COVID-19 or an entirely different
pathogen."
The OpenPandemics - COVID-19 project on World Community Grid
complements the other resources IBM has recently made
available to researchers fighting COVID-19. For example, IBM's
Summit supercomputer is being used by the U.S. Department of
Energy to help identify chemical compounds that could
potentially fight the virus.
World Community Grid, a trusted IBM corporate social
responsibility initiative, is a longstanding effort provided free
of charge to scientists who need massive computing power to study
humanitarian issues. The World Community Grid software allows
people to use their computers as normal without compromising data
safety or speed.
To date, more than 770,000 people and 450 organizations have
contributed nearly two million years of computing power to support
30 research projects, including studies on cancer, Ebola, Zika and
malaria and AIDS, as well as projects for developing better water
filtration systems and solar energy collection. Data from World
Community Grid projects are always shared with the world, and so
far more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles have been
published. The computing power is provided free of charge on the
basis of crowdsourcing, allowing researchers to scale up research,
pursue new research approaches and accelerate processes.
For more information about Scripps Research's project on World
Community Grid, please click here.
Media Contact:
Ari Fishkind, IBM media
relations
fishkind@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM