World Community Grid: Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

WCG has a new project available, the goal being a search for potential molecule candidates for Leishmaniasis treatments.

According to the WCG website, Leishmaniasis is one of the most neglected tropical diseases in the world, infecting more than 2 million people in 97 countries.

Quoting directly from the the WCG website:
"Screening for the best potential drug compounds is an early step in the process of developing effective treatments for the disease. With enough computing power, this screening can be done much more quickly than using conventional laboratory experiments. However, existing computer facilities available to the researchers would require approximately 120 years to perform the screening. The power of World Community Grid can reduce the time required to less than one year."


120 years vs. 1 year. As you can see, even just a little bit of your computing time will make a big difference to this program.

Take a look at Berkeley's BOINC website to download the software to participate in several distributive computing projects. To participate in the Leishmaniasis project (or several others listed in the WCG) sign up at the World Community Grid website. And as always, if you so wish, feel free to join the Citizen Science Works computing team. Most important, please do sign up at BOINC and put your idle processors to work for a good cause.