Distributed Computing Attacking SARS

fwc writes "D2OL has added a SARS Target to it's distributed computing project which locates potential drug candidates for several viruses. At this point, I've replaced SETI@Home at least temporarily on all of my Boxen. There are clients available for Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and of course Windows."

Comments

Good idea

[Daath]

I wonder when my United Devices client (ud.com) is gonna add that project... It's currently working on smallpox and cancer...

Should I change projects? Switch UD in favor of D2OL or what? And why? ;)

Sounds intriguing, but...

[Lurkingrue]

I'm not sure that this project (as it is now) will be all that useful. Alot of it appears to be hinging on generous speculation.

I'm not a virologist, but as far as I remember, drug-directed approaches haven't been notably successful with attacking coronaviruses (ever hear that "medicine can't cure the common cold", anyone?) -- and to confuse things more, this one seems to be very atypical.

Also, from what I know about the anti-virals that have shown some efficacy against these type of SS-RNA viruses, they've been directed at nucleic acids, not at product-proteins. Ribavirin, which was initially hoped to be the "magic bullet" to stop SARS is a nucleoside analogue (purine? I don't remember). I haven't heard of an effective intervention that disrupts the protein envelope or synthesis.

Additionally, this group is assuming that the causitive agent of SARS has correctly been isolated and identified in the first place, which isn't certain by any means.

Aiming computing power towards a worthy goal like this can't hurt, but I question how effective it really will be. I guess the computer-types can just tweak the parameters as the biomed-folks find out more on their end.

Re:Don't all move to this!

[silentbozo]

While much of the public fears of SARS is definitely overplayed in the short term, in the long term there is a justifiable fear of the risks posed by a fast-spreading, lethal, and poorly understood pathogen. Especially one that coincides with the cold and flu season (thus masking the symptoms of a more severe disease), and may share similar traits in terms of easy transmission via airborne droplets. Remember, highly infectious pathogens are much more dangerous to the world population than they were prior to the jet age (think Ebola...)

Re:Don't all move to this!

[McDutchie]

When diseases were feared in the past it was worth fearing them: Justinian's Plague (541-544AD) killed 40% of the population of Constantinople;
[...]

If we had lived in that time, SARS would probably have killed a similar percentage of the population. Nowadays we have modern concepts of hygiene, we know what bacteria and viruses are, etc. so we know how to contain epidemics. That doesn't mean that the disease is any less worth of fear. It's that fear that motivated humanity to get to this level of medical knowledge in the first place.

How do you know

[CausticWindow]

that all these distributed projects are actually doing what they're supposed to?

Would you notice it if my long-lasting-no-results-yet-but-soon-for-sure distributed project for an AIDS vaccine were actually a rendering farm for animated kiddie porn movies?

Re:Ain't there yet

[Muhammar]

Biologists have to find target. Produce the protein artificialy, study it and validate it (=conclusive evidence that blocking it will blocks the virus). Ten they have to develop a reliable high-throughput assay and huge collections of chemicals are screened to see if there is any decent inhibitor found. Chemists select the most reasonable candidates and start elaborating them (=derivatomania). Once they get very potent inhibitors, they do a lot of other optimisation - to get drug candidate that is cell-permeable cells, not metabolized/excreeted too fast, has low protein binding and good distribution, is not toxic and is preferably oraly available. At this point a lot of detailed biology research has to be done in animals, which is slow. Then there is study on healthy volunteers (subject of government aproval), then pilot clinic study just to see if they can get decent dosing in patients, then second large double-blind clinical study to see efficiency and the third phase even larger study to compare the drug with other therapies. Human trials are extremely costly.

Pre-clinical development can take several years, as it was case with AIDS, clinical trials 4-6 years. It goes this fast only if there is a big profit potencial(to justify $400M cost of development), which so far there is not.

Government now tests a collection of *all* known approved drugs (concidered reasonably safe) to see if any of them has any effect. If we get lucky on this - slim chances - it would cut the development time and the clinical testing too, since only 1-2 studies would be needed.