TOKYO, Mar 17, 2009 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) ----IBM (NYSE: IBM: 92.86, 1.661, 1.82%) and researchers from the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute and Chiba University in Japan are launching a new World Community Grid project to discover a drug treatment for neuroblastoma, the most common cause of death in children with solid tumors. Cancer is a leading cause of death in children.

The cause of neuroblastoma is unknown, but most physicians believe that it is an accidental cell growth that occurs during normal development of the sympathetic ganglia and adrenal glands. It occurs most often the first two years of a child's life, and has a high risk for disease relapse with survival rates less than 40 percent.

The rapid advancement of genetic research at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute holds great promise for treating neuroblastoma. The new Help Fight Childhood Cancer project uses the idle computational power from volunteers' computers to identify which of the three million potential drug candidates prohibit growth of three proteins believed to be key in the progression of the cancer. This project could help build smarter health systems by delivering better drug treatments that could empower individuals to customize or target their therapies and treatment plans.

"Our promising research will be further advanced by the free computing power we will use from World Community Grid," said Dr. Akira Nakagawara, the principal investigator at the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute. "It would take us about 100 years using our own computing resources to make progress, but with access to one of the world's largest virtual supercomputers, we estimate to complete this project in 2 years, and begin laboratory trials."


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