does folding really do stuff for medical study's?

[DominicNikon]

i became part of the linus tech tips team today and started folding but does folding really do any thing for medical studys? i took part in bio medical for middle school this year and im just wondering

[HPWebcamAble]

Basic explanation:

Quote

Proteins are the elementary machines inside every cell that we rely on to keep us alive and healthy. They assemble themselves by “folding.” When proteins misfold, there can be serious health consequences. If we better understand protein misfolding we can design drugs and therapies to combat these illnesses.

Source+more info:

https://folding.stanford.edu/home/the-science/

[DarkRuskov]

studies* (sorry had to correct)

 

and yes it helps a lot, and there are many other ways to help with the power of your pc.

[RedWulf]

Every see the grand canyon? A home folder is a cup of water, seems like little but with many folders and time it adds up. Though most of us aren't actively seeing the contributions for what they are, at its prime it should be a marvel. The same goes for many distributed computing projects. 

[thekeemo]

The way I see it is folding is a way for pharma companies to not spend money on computation power and use yours instead. Then charge obscene amounts for life saving medicine.

[Guest]

What Medical studys have in common is lack of time and resources.

If the goverment isnt going to give them enough horsepower to do it, we will.

It works by putting people's computers in clients and working together in load to calculate math problems/simulate(in a host of course).

this is called computer distributing and it can benifit sientists that do not have enough time or resources(say to make a super-cluster of computers).

Ex : Simulation of proteins folding/misfolding calculates enough data to find cures for multiple diseases like AIDS and Parkinson, which the developers of F@H are trying to do.

I dont know much about F@H if im incorect someone correct me.

[Huntsman]

This is all done with good intentions, we donate our computing power to help research. But can anyone be certain that the user of these computational power isn't some pharma company who would later on sell the products with stupidly high profit margin?

 

Don't get me wrong, if this is going to universities (that aren't contracted by pharma companies) or student projects I would cool with it. I have been actively contributing to F@H for years now but sometimes I get the feeling of doubt regarding how my donations are being used.

[wuffy68]

6 hours ago, thekeemo said:

The way I see it is folding is a way for pharma companies to not spend money on computation power and use yours instead. Then charge obscene amounts for life saving medicine.

You're not the first to assume this. But it's more nuanced. The research is seeded by the NIH and NSF. The computational power comes from contributors like you and I. If the research results in a patent, by law, Stanford would have to sell that patent to the highest bidder (see Bayh-Dole act of 1980). Big pharma certainly would not get the patent for free, however to your point, all the research results not resulting in a patent are public domain. So pharma companies can just "look up" the results from Folding@Home protein simulations - but so can their competitors :-) So far, Folding@Home's results are just beginning to gain critical mass with nearing 100 PetaFLOPS of contributed computational power. Much of the work has concentrated on the study of protein folding dynamics and deep learning algorithms required to analyse the results, and optimize the work units to make the search for "drug-able states" more effective and less random. Over the last 8 years, they've been getting closer to patent-able lead compounds, but the research results impact many studies that also cite the completed work. You can read about a related series of Alzheimer's studies that have been used since 2008. Also of interest may be how pharma companies are incentivized to compete to solve 3rd world diseases through the Health Impact Fund (HIF) without any need to further soak 3rd world governments. 

[wuffy68]

5 hours ago, Huntsman said:

This is all done with good intentions, we donate our computing power to help research. But can anyone be certain that the user of these computational power isn't some pharma company who would later on sell the products with stupidly high profit margin?

 

Don't get me wrong, if this is going to universities (that aren't contracted by pharma companies) or student projects I would cool with it. I have been actively contributing to F@H for years now but sometimes I get the feeling of doubt regarding how my donations are being used.

You might be interested in reading the reply to thekeemo above. I hope it answers some common misconceptions (at least the way my team and I understand them)