Two projects come to an end

Dr Keller from the Smash Childhood Cancer project, wrote us:

"The Children's Cancer Therapy Development Institute is grateful to the Volunteers of the World Community Grid for making possible projects in collaboration with Dr Tyuji Hoshino at Chiba University.

The brightest spot of these collaborations was that our project is now part of the $25M Cancer Research UK Cancer Grand Challenge KOODAC Project with MIT, Institut Curie, University of Dundee, Nurix Therapeutics and others to develop protein degrader therapeutics for childhood sarcomas.

The Smash Childhood Cancer program of the WCG has also been the scientific basis of several Summer Internship projects, advancing childhood cancer cures and developing a diverse group of young people towards careers in science and medicine. "

All the best to the team on their future research.

Dr Croft from the Help Stop TB project, wrote us:

"Although the project has not been active recently for new calculations, we
have been doing work behind the scenes to wrap up on the calculations that
we have and preparing to communicate the findings. This has involved
exploring new XAI (explainable AI – not ‘black-box’ methods, but ones that
tell us about why decisions are made) methodologies to handle our
distinctive data sets.  Because mycolic acids are unique in their behaviour
out of molecules studied in the literature to date, this has meant more work
than anticipated, but we are hoping to have everything analysed with the new
methods soon. 

Moreover, we have been looking at how to reapply some of these methods to similar challenging systems in other new projects in the group, such as the application to new biological medicines, to better understand their properties and streamline production – watch this space.

As it stands within the current project, however, it looks like we will not be able to get new extended systems for the next phase up and running in the timeframe we had initially hoped. So, we have taken the decision to put new calculations on hold until we have a dedicated researcher in place to oversee the work and we will focus on wrapping up what we have.

Meanwhile, we’d like to thank all the volunteers who have been with us over the last
many many years, and their unwavering support for the project.  We hope to be able to update you on the details of the outputs and impacts of your contributions in the near future."

We wish Dr Croft Team all the best in their future endeavours.