dslreports logo

These are the three WCG projects that are involved with cancer research. Which to choose is up to you. If you don't want to choose, just choose all three in your preferences!

Read up on the sciences of what they are trying to accomplish..and make your own decisions.

They are all cancer related in their own way :)

Help Conquer Cancer: (Completed project)
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· 1Main.do
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· ame=hcc1

quote:
The mission of Help Conquer Cancer is to 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.

Significance
In order to significantly impact the understanding of cancer and its treatment, novel therapeutic approaches capable of targeting metastatic disease (or cancers spreading to other parts of the body) must not only be discovered, but also diagnostic markers (or indicators of the disease), which can detect early stage disease, must be identified.

Researchers have been able to make important discoveries when studying multiple human cancers, even when they have limited or no information at all about the involved proteins. However, to better understand and treat cancer, it is important for scientists to discover novel proteins involved in cancer, and their structure and function.

Scientists are especially interested in proteins that may have a functional relationship with cancer. These are proteins that are either over-expressed or repressed in cancers, or proteins that have been modified or mutated in ways that result in structural changes to them.

Improving X-ray crystallography will enable researchers to determine the structure of many cancer-related proteins faster. This will lead to improving our understanding of the function of these proteins and enable potential pharmaceutical interventions to treat this deadly disease




Help Fight Childhood Cancer
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· cMain.do
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· ame=hfcc
quote:
Project Status and Findings:
Information on the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project may be found on these pages, on the Chiba University Help Fight Childhood Cancer website »www.m.chiba-u.ac.jp/clas ··· dex.html and on Chiba Cancer Center's Help Fight Childhood Cancer website »www.chiba-cc.jp/test/ins ··· wcg.html. The latest status updates may also be found at this site. To discuss or ask questions about this project, please visit the Help Fight Childhood Cancer Forum.

Mission
The mission of the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project is to find drugs that can disable three particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma, one of the most frequently occurring solid tumors in children. Identifying these drugs could potentially make the disease much more curable when combined with chemotherapy treatment.

Significance
Neuroblastoma is one of the most common tumors occuring in early childhood and is the most common cause of death in children with solid cancer tumors. If this project is successful, it could dramatically increase the cure rate for neuroblastoma, providing the breakthrough for this disease that has eluded scientists thus far.

Approach
Proteins (molecules which are a bound collection of atoms) are the building blocks of all life processes. They also play an important role in the progress of diseases such as cancer.

Scientists have identified three particular proteins involved with neuroblastoma, which if disabled, could make the disease much more curable by conventional methods such as chemotherapy. This project is performing virtual chemistry experiments between these proteins and each of the three million drug candidates that scientists believe could potentially block the proteins involved. A computer program called AutoDock will test if the shape of the protein and shape of each drug candidate fit together and bond in a suitable way to disable the protein.

This work consists of 9 million virtual chemistry experiments, each of which would take hours to perform on a single computer, totaling over 8,000 years of computer time. World Community Grid is performing these computations in parallel and is thus speeding up the effort dramatically. The project is expected to be completed in two years or less.



Human Proteome Folding - Phase II (Completed project):
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· earch.do
»www.worldcommunitygrid.o ··· ame=hpf2

quote:
This project dovetails with efforts at NYU and ISB to support predictive, preventative and personalized medicine (under the assumption that these secreted proteins will be key elements of this medicine of the future). It is too early to say which proteins will end up being biomarkers (substances sometimes found in an increased amount in the blood, other body fluids, or tissues and which can be used to indicate the presence of some types of cancer). However, it is clear that many will end up being secreted proteins. As in the first phase of the project, the power of World Community Grid will be critical in getting results quickly to researchers in the biological and biomedical communities.


Expand got feedback?

by lilhurricane See Profile
last modified: 2013-06-29 17:13:25