Schistosomiasis is a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms that are transmitted by freshwater snails. The disease kills 200,000 people each year and affects over 207 million people. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its socioeconomic devastation.
The researchers at Infórium University in Belo Horizonte and FIOCRUZ-Minas, Brazil, are running the Say No to Schistosoma project on World Community Grid to perform computer simulations of the interactions between millions of chemical compounds and certain target proteins. This will help find the most promising compounds that may lead to effective treatments for the disease.
Please join us and donate your unused computer time to help search for new drugs to treat this severe and neglected disease!
For more information about this exciting project, please go to the Research overview on our website.
News Blog
- To view comments from Rosangela Hickson, Principal Investigator, please click here.
Press Release
- To view the IBM press release (Portuguese), please click here.
Radio Interview
- To listen to a radio interview (in Portuguese) with Alcely Barroso, IBM Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs Manager in Brazil regarding the importance of this research project, please click here.
Participation in the Say No to Schistosoma project
Say No to Schistosoma is the twentieth research project to be launched on World Community Grid and one of eleven projects currently running on World Community Grid. The other ten research projects are:
- GO Fight Against Malaria (launched November, 2011)
- Drug Search for Leishmaniasis (launched August, 2011)
- Computing for Clean Water (launched August, 2010)
- The Clean Energy Project – Phase 2 (launched June, 2010)
- Discover Dengue Drugs – Together – Phase 2 (launched February, 2010)
- Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2 (launched May, 2009)
- Help Fight Childhood Cancer (launched March, 2009)
- Help Conquer Cancer (launched November, 2007)
- Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (launched July, 2006)
- FightAIDS@Home (launched November, 2005)
For more detailed information and FAQs about each of these projects, please click on the Research button in the upper navigation bar. We thank all of our members for their valuable contributions to the projects to date and hope you will continue to help us process those, as well as this latest project.
Because there are eleven research projects running on World Community Grid, your grid agent could receive work units from any of the projects depending on your Project profile. If you prefer, you may elect to focus your computer's time only on particular projects. To do so, press the My Grid button in the upper navigation bar and select My Projects or click here. Work is sent only to machines which meet minimum system requirements set for a particular project. To read more specifics on the system requirements for the Say No to Schistosoma project and the other projects, click here.
Project Badge
If a member contributes a minimum of 14 days of CPU Run Time to this project, they will receive a Say No to Schistosoma project badge on their member statistics page and next to their member name when they post in the forums. There is a different badge for each research project and beta testing. To read more about badges, click here.
Forums
In addition to providing information about this project, we have created a forum for discussions about the Say No to Schistosoma project. To participate in this forum, please press the Forums button in the upper navigation bar or click here. Only forum authors with the title “Say No to Schistosoma Scientist" are authorized to comment as representatives of Infórium University in Belo Horizonte and FIOCRUZ-Minas, Brazil.
Questions?
If you have any questions, World Community Grid provides you with four methods of obtaining assistance: (1) Review the FAQs found in the Help section of the website; (2) Review the forums to see if anyone has asked/answered the question that you have; (3) Ask the question in World Community Grid's Say No to Schistosoma project forum found here and a Community Advisor or a more experienced member will provide an answer; or (4) Send an email to the support desk from the Contact Us link found at the bottom of every page of the website (except in the forums).
We thank you for contributing to the Say No to Schistosoma project.