IBM researchers have joined forces with those at the University of Edinburgh on a five-year supercomputing project designed to speed design of anti-HIV drugs.
IBM’s massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputer (the University of Edinburgh installed the first such computer in Europe back in 2004) will be used as part of the effort to create simultaneous HIV infection inhibitors to beat the persistent virus.
“Our early results are promising, showing that we can use computers to simulate which molecules can stop the HIV virus from infecting humans, which drug makers could then use to more rapidly develop those drugs,” said Jason Crain, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Divisional Head of Science at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, said in a statement. “This is a new approach to drug design — we are using sophisticated algorithms coupled with experimental techniques to design improved molecular therapies, and we can capitalize on enormous computing power to do this efficiently and rationally.”
Big Blue also this week said its researchers had created specialized algorithms to help model and manage natural disasters such as wildfires, floods and diseases.
