FightAIDS@Home ("Fight AIDS at home") is a

volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...

project operated by the Olson Laboratory at

The Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research, previously known as The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institu ...

. It runs on internet-connected home computers, and since July 2013 also runs on

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s and tablets. It aims to use biomedical software simulation techniques to search for ways to cure or prevent the spread of

HIV/AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...

Methods

Olson's target is HIV protease, a key molecular machine of the virus that when blocked stops it from maturing. These blockers, known as "

protease inhibitors Protease inhibitors (PIs) are medications that act by interfering with enzymes that cleave proteins. Some of the most well known are antiviral drugs widely used to treat HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. These protease inhibitors prevent viral repli ...

", are thus a way of avoiding the onset of AIDS and prolonging life. The Olson Laboratory is using computational methods to identify new candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease. This general approach is called

structure-based drug design Drug design, often referred to as rational drug design or simply rational design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. The drug is most commonly an organic small molecule that activa ...

, and according to the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, it has already had a dramatic effect on the lives of people living with AIDS. FightAIDS@Home makes use of the

AutoDock VINA AutoDock is a molecular modeling simulation software. It is especially effective for protein-ligand docking. AutoDock 4 is available under the GNU General Public License. AutoDock is one of the most cited docking software applications in the res ...

software, which tests how well a particular molecule binds to the

HIV-1 protease HIV-1 protease (PR) is a retroviral aspartyl protease (retropepsin), an enzyme involved with peptide bond hydrolysis in retroviruses, that is essential for the life-cycle of HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. HIV protease cleaves newly synthesi ...

. In October 2015 FightAIDS@Home Phase 2 was launched, using the computationally intensive Binding Energy Distribution Analysis Method (BEDAM) to "more thoroughly evaluate the top candidates from the vast number of results generated in Phase 1".

History

It was originally implemented using a distributed computing software infrastructure provided by Entropia. However, since May 2003 FightAIDS@Home has not been associated with Entropia, and on November 21, 2005, the project moved to

World Community Grid World Community Grid (WCG) is an effort to create the world's largest volunteer computing platform to tackle scientific research that benefits humanity. Launched on November 16, 2004, with proprietary Grid MP client from United Devices and addin ...

and the Entropia software was abandoned. Scripps Research Institute published its first peer-reviewed scientific paper about the results of FightAIDS@Home on April 21, 2007. This paper explains that the results up to that point will primarily be used to improve the efficiency of future FightAIDS@Home calculations. On February 3, 2010, the project announced it found two compounds that make a completely new class of AIDS-fighting drugs possible: "two compounds that act on novel binding sites for an enzyme used by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS. The discovery lays the foundation for the development of a new class of anti-HIV drugs to enhance existing therapies, treat drug-resistant strains of the disease, and slow the evolution of drug resistance in the virus."

System requirements

The minimum system requirements to run FightAIDS@home are: With distributed computing every computer added accelerates the project, while the program has little impact on the performance of the machine where it is installed, as the calculation process can be set to run at minimum priority in the background.

Publications

* *

References

External links

World Community Grid - Research - FightAIDS@HomeFightAIDS@Home
at Scripps

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fightaids at Home Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing projects

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