GALVESTON, Texas - IBM has awarded the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston a $22,000 grant to install a high-performance IBM storage system to assist its global computing effort to find drugs for reemerging infectious diseases like dengue, West Nile and hepatitis C. The UTMB project performs complex calculations that test millions of small molecules to find drug-like chemicals that can stop virus proteins from functioning.
These complex drug discovery calculations require over 25,000 years of computer time. However, by running these calculations on IBM's World Community Grid, which harnesses the underutilized power of one million personal computers located around the world, this project will be completed in less than two years from its start last August.
The IBM grant provides UTMB's drug discovery effort with the IBM System Storage DS3200 and 14 terabytes of disk space, enough space to store the digital equivalent of 14 million books or 20,000 feature-length movies. This storage system will help handle the immense amount of data flowing to UTMB from the million computers connected to the World Community Grid.
Stan Watowich, associate professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology and lead scientist for UTMB's World Community Grid project, said, "The calculations being done by participating World Community Grid computers generate approximately one terabyte of information each month. At this rate, we have quickly saturated the storage resources available in our information services department. The new equipment from IBM, representing massive amounts of fast disk storage, will enable us to continue to receive, analyze, and store the results being generated by World Community Grid computers."
The computers of the World Community Grid have examined tens of millions of drug-like molecules and have identified those likely to interfere with virus replication.
Watowich says that antivirals against dengue and West Nile viruses discovered through calculations on the grid are showing initial promise in his laboratory and are undergoing further testing. Additional calculations to find increasingly potent drugs to treat dengue, West Nile and hepatitis C will be completed by mid-2009.
UTMB learned about the IBM philanthropic program that provides state-of-the art computer resources through its ongoing collaboration on the World Community Grid.
The nonprofit World Community Grid is open to people willing to allow their computer's idle time to be utilized for calculations that benefit society.
For more information on the World Community Grid, visit the Web site at http://www.worlcommunitygrid.org/