Volunteers squeeze decades of cancer research into one year

Canadian researchers hope to accelerate the war on cancer by tapping into a global network of hundreds of thousands of people volunteering their idle computer time.

The research team, led by Dr Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI), will process their data with the help of the World Community Grid, a network of PCs and laptops with the power equivalent to one of the globe’s top five fastest supercomputers.

The team will use the World Community Grid to analyse the results of experiments on proteins using data collected by scientists at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, New York.

This analysis would take conventional computer systems 162 years to complete. However, using World Community Grid, Dr Jurisica anticipates the analysis could be finished in one to two years, providing researchers with a better way to study how proteins function.

“We know that most cancers are caused by defective proteins in our bodies, but we need to better understand the specific function of those proteins and how they interact in the body,” said Jurisica.

“We also have to find proteins that will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, before symptoms appear, to have the best chance of treating the disease — or potentially stopping it completely.”

The research team now has more than 86 million images of 9400 unique proteins that could be linked to cancer, captured in the course of more than 14.5 million experiments by scientists at Hauptman-Woodward.

This comprises the most comprehensive database on the chemistry of a large number of proteins, a resource that will help researchers around the world unlock the mechanisms of many cancers, such as breast, prostate and childhood leukemia.

To join or find more information on the Grid, visit www.worldcommunitygrid.org.