ACADEMIA

'It's only fitting that a distributed computer platform allows global participation to potentially prevent a global pandemic,' says Wolfgang Hinz, head of Computational Chemistry at The Rothberg Institute -- The Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases (TRI), a non-profit research institute devoted to discovering and developing drugs to treat childhood diseases, today announced the release of the first avian influenza target to its Drug Design and Optimization Lab (D2OL) distributed computing project. Anyone with a personal computer can contribute to this project simply by downloading a screensaver that works when their computer is idle. The D2OL community is growing rapidly and is currently comprised of nearly 80,000 volunteers and their computers in 93 countries working to identify potential new drugs for treating avian flu and other infectious diseases. By releasing this target the project is creating a platform to rapidly respond to changes in the flu virus. Of all avian flu viruses that have infected humans, Avian Influenza A, or H5N1, has been found to be the most prevalent and the most deleterious to the health of its human hosts. It is, therefore, the most likely of the avian flu viruses to mutate sufficiently to facilitate person-to-person infection, and the world continues to monitor avian flu hotbeds in Asia and Europe for the potential nucleus of a worldwide H5N1 pandemic. The first avian flu target released for the D2OL project is the H5N1 neuraminidase, which aids in the pathology and spread of the disease. The D2OL software models target proteins identified from the avian flu and simulates the binding of drug molecules with these targets in order to identify promising combinations that can potentially inhibit important disease pathways. The process is akin to searching through a collection of keys (drug candidates) to find the one that will fit a specific lock (target protein). D2OL's top candidates are studied in leading academic laboratories affiliated with The Rothberg Institute (TRI), including laboratories at Harvard, Yale, and Fox Chase Cancer Center. The introduction of the first Avian Influenza target not only allows D2OL's international community to begin identifying potential drug treatments, but also establishes a flexible platform for quickly deploying new targets that may result from mutations in the virus. Various avian flu viruses are carried in the intestines of birds worldwide, generally not causing active illness in the animals. The viruses are extremely contagious among birds, though, and are especially damaging to domesticated birds. As more domesticated birds, such as chickens, become infected, the risk to humans is greatly increased. While human-to-human transmission is relatively rare, and some currently available prescription drugs have shown promise in treating the disease in humans, the avian flu viruses, like other viruses, have proved to be adaptable. Thus, the ability to react quickly to new avian flu variants is of paramount importance, and D2OL provides a flexible platform for deploying new targets to tens of thousands of computers around the globe within minutes.