Scientists from Brazil, the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark have collaborated with IBM World Community Grid to launch OpenZika, an effort to find drug candidates to treat the virus.
World Community Grid is a crowdsourcing initiative produced by IBM's corporate social responsibility and philanthropy division. The initiative allows anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet to donate their unused computing power to advance scientific research.
Now, the World Community Grid will help power virtual experiments on more than 20 million chemical compounds that could form the basis of antiviral drugs to treat Zika virus.
"The best part of this project is that it's truly 'open' — we will share all of the data we gather with the research community and general public, further accelerating Zika virus research," said Jair Siqueira-Neto, PhD, assistant professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy. "What's more, researchers not already participating in OpenZika are invited to submit proposals to receive free computing power to support additional Zika projects."
To learn more about the World Community Grid OpenZika project, click here.
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