Help Fight Childhood Cancer

WCGs mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. You can choose from various work units to crunch: Fight AIDS, cure Cancer or support the Human Proteome Folding projects amongst many. (Previously supported by IBM).
Post Reply
UBT - Rick Horn
Posts: 17206
Joined: Sat May 06, 2006 1:00 am

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Post by UBT - Rick Horn »

HFCC is the latest WCG project, which was rolled out last month.

The type of cancer being targeted is called neuroblastoma, and usually hits children within the first three years of life. It is a very fast growing cancer, and has a high mortality rate.

HFCC is concentrating on thee particular proteins known to be present with people who have neuroblastoma, and Japanese scientists are going to dock the proteins with 3 million potential drug compounds in hope of a cure, or as an adjunct with chemo and radio therapy.

This means that there are 9 million combinations to try, and hence 9 million WUs to run.

The WUs themselves take an average time of 5 hours to run. Minimum quorum is 1, so you won`t get a long queue of pendings.

Occasionally, you will get an "inconclusive" result, with no credit.
However, these usually resolve themself in time, and you will get credit.

As you can see, this is a very worthwhile cause.
Last edited by UBT - Rick Horn on Mon May 25, 2009 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply