Faster cancer research and cures from computer power

Cancer research from PC power

Scientists have created a method to automate and speed up cancer research, thereby transforming what is now a time-consuming and laborious process to discover the structure of cancer-related proteins and, ultimately, find cancer cures, all via the power of personal computers.

The Help Conquer Cancer project, in conjunction with IBM and the World Community Grid, announced the breakthrough this morning and explained the ways in which PC power is being used to aid cancer research and development. The is all made possible by volunteers who are, effectively, donating the spare processing power that they have on their personal computers.

This PC power is then passed on to researchers around the world and gives them the equivalent of millions of dollars of free computational power to enable medical, nutrition, energy and environmental research.

Using the World Community Grid, the Help Conquer Cancer Project has developed a system which accurately recognizes when protein samples undergo a solidifying process called crystallization, which makes the proteins ready for further examination by special x-ray. The process is necessary for identifying how the structure, shape and interaction of some proteins may have a role in causing cancer and therefore could mean a breakthrough in cancer research and discovering cures for the disease.

How the system works

The Grid has enabled scientists to successfully recognise 80 percent of crystal-bearing images and 98 percent of the clear drops of protein solution that existed prior to crystallization. This enables six times as many images per protein to be examined compared to human review, and in dramatically less time.

Crystallization permits beams of x-rays to bombard the sample and diffract light into many directions, producing a three-dimensional profile, making samples easier to study. However, the crystallization process can be long-winded and tiresome: a single protein sample can require thousands of attempts to spur crystallization by introducing chemical compounds via a robot. And, until now, painstaking human observation was then still needed to verify that crystals actually formed.

"This advance illustrates once again the enormous value that World Community Grid brings to the scientific arena," said Dr. Igor Jurisica, the visiting scientist at IBM's Centre for Advanced Studies, and Canada Research Chair in integrative computational biology. "The people who volunteered the spare computing cycles of their PC processors ought to take great pride that they made this development possible."

Dr. Joseph Jasinski, Distinguished Engineer and Program Director of IBM's Healthcare and Life Sciences Institute, said: "Advances such as this make us at IBM feel privileged to be in a position to support World Community Grid and the work of the many scientist who use the system."

History of the Grid

The Help Conquer Cancer project was launched on the Grid back in November 2007 and, since then, 1.5 million volunteers have contributed 50,981 CPU-years to the cancer project, which equates to an average of 54 years of computing per day.

This massive burst in PC power for researchers has allowed them to identify and map Hauptman-Woodward's archive of 100-million images of 12,500 unique proteins that could be linked to cancer, captured in the course of more than 19.2 million experiments there.

This is now the largest and most complete database of this kind in the entire world and it can enable and assist researchers in understanding how many different cancers form and evolve, including prostate and breast cancers, or childhood leukemia

100,000 volunteers from 80 different countries donated their PC power and the World Community Grid is now the world's largest public humanitarian grid. Its strength, equivalent to one of the world's most powerful supercomputers and the number of volunteers continues to increase. In April 2010, over 22,000 new devices were added to the Grid.

IBM donate the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build the Grid's infrastructure and continues to give the Project free hosting, support and general maintenance.

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