POLL: Medical Crunchers: Will DC cure cancer?

[plonk420]

due to the smallness of the group where i posted it, i'm just copypasting it here as i'm curious as to everyone's thoughts:

do you think distributed computing projects will cure cancer?

i started with Easynews (years after i lost my mom to cancer) because i got free site credits...

i just lost my dad this year to cancer as well. i was doing DC with that inkling of a hope that it would help, but i expected nothing. now i crunch with that miniscule hope that hopefully my genetically doomed ass might be helped by it, but again, i don't have TOO much hope in it...

any other people have opinions on the effectiveness of our number crunching?

 

[TAandy]

i'll look on the bright side, and voted 'likely'!
🙂

 

[Assimilator1]

Me too, I think it'll at least contribute towards a cure someday 🙂

plonk420
Man that's harsh to lose both your parents to cancer! 🙁

 

[plonk420]

well, i'm more curious about what you guys "realistically think" (not to sound cynical 😉)

i voted for 1% ... however--to NOT cynically use a recent phrase--this is more of a "gut feeling" rather than an educated guess...

@assimilator: not sure what better to say than "yep"

 

[Insidious]

I think cancer will be understood and if not cured, controlled and it's severity greatly reduced with continued study.

I don't think any one tool or any single discovery is going to be the answer to curing cancer. I believe this will come as the culmination of years of study from countless arenas of science.

With that said, yes I do believe that microbiological understanding will play a large role and F@H is part of that.

Give me a choice better than 1% please. (<-- that means I voted 'likely')

-Sid

 

[GLeeM]

nullThe following is a quote from here. It's not in their cancer area of study but it shows hope for Alzheimer's.

December 18, 2008
New FAH results on possible new Alzheimer's drug presented
This is very preliminary news, but something I'm very, very excited about, so I'll give some advance news. On Tuesday, we presented our results regarding new possible drugs (small molecule leads) to fight Alzheimer's Disease at a recent meeting at Stanford. This meeting was part of the NIH Roadmap Nanomedicine center (http://proteinfoldingcenter.org/) retreat and was supported by NIH grants to Folding@home.

It's very early (so we are not publicly talking about the details until this has passed peer review), but we are very excited that it looks like we may have multiple small molecules which appear to inhibit toxicity of Abeta, the protein which is the toxic element in Alzheimer's Disease.


This is exciting in many ways. It's been a long road for FAH to get to this point, but we are starting to see the possibility of seeing these results published easily before our 10th birthday (October 2010). Considering all the technology development that had to be done in the first five years, these results have come very quickly (in the last 3 years), which is exciting. In particular, we are now looking to apply these methods to other protein misfolding diseases (we have pilot projects for Huntington's Disease underway).


Finally, I should stress that while we're very excited about this, it's still early and a lot can go wrong between where we are and having a drug that doctors can prescribe. Over the holidays, we will be double checking the experimental data, crossing t's and dotting i's to make sure there is nothing missed before we think about submitting this for peer reviewed publication. Also, there is still a long way from an interesting possible drug (where we are now) to something which has passed FDA clinical trials (where we'd love to be), and a lot can go wrong in clinical trials in particular.


Thus, this is an important milestone for FAH and we are very grateful to all who have contributed. Happy holidays to all!

 

[Markfw]

Lets put it this way, I am investing $5000 per year in hardware, and $2000 per year in electricity to do F@H with no writeoffs on my taxes, as I believe it will make a significant difference.

I put my money where my mouth is.

 

[Drsignguy]

Hopefully, there will be a cure or somewhat controlled during my lifetime. It would be great to know that we here have a participated on the hopes of curing some of these deadly diseases. I do this for a few reasons: First, it's available to me so I can make use of a hobby that I have. I have had Family, friends and collogues with cancer that past away from it. And finally, here at AT, it's all of you that help make it fun and enjoyable. I can not think of a better way or place to do something I feel that is right.:thumbsup:

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: Insidious
I think cancer will be understood and if not cured, controlled and it's severity greatly reduced with continued study.

I don't think any one tool or any single discovery is going to be the answer to curing cancer. I believe this will come as the culmination of years of study from countless arenas of science.

With that said, yes I do believe that microbiological understanding will play a large role and F@H is part of that.

Give me a choice better than 1% please. (<-- that means I voted 'likely')

-Sid

Nice summary Sid!:thumbsup:

Sorry about your loss of both parents plonk420.