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This is an update on Folding@home’s efforts to assist researchers around the world taking up the global fight against COVID-19.

After initial quality control and limited testing phases, Folding@home team has released an initial wave of projects simulating potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and the related SARS-CoV virus (for which more structural data is available) into full production on Folding@home. Many thanks to the large number of Folding@home donors who have assisted us thus far by running in beta or advanced modes.

This initial wave of projects focuses on better understanding how these coronaviruses interact with the human ACE2 receptor required for viral entry into human host cells, and how researchers might be able to interfere with them through the design of new therapeutic antibodies or small molecules that might disrupt their interaction.

We need your help! Folding@home is joining researchers around the world working to better understand the 2019 Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) to accelerate the open science effort to develop new life-saving therapies. By downloading Folding@Home, you can donate your unused computational resources to the Folding@home Consortium, where researchers working to advance our understanding of the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV that could aid in the design of new therapies. The data you help us generate will be quickly and openly disseminated as part of an open science collaboration of multiple laboratories around the world, giving researchers new tools that may unlock new opportunities for developing lifesaving drugs.

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ren5311
Neuroscience | Neurology | Alzheimer's Drug Discovery
1.2k points
·
7 years ago

Unequivocally, yes.

I do drug discovery. One important part is knowing the molecular target, which requires precise knowledge of structural elements of complex proteins.

Some of these are solved by x-ray crystallography, but Folding@Home has solved several knotty problems for proteins that are not amenable to this approach.

Bottom line is that we are actively designing drugs based on the solutions of that program, and that's only the aspect that pertains to my particular research.

( with a link to https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm201332p )