Winners of the NVIDIA Cancer Research Competition
Maksim malakhovskiy, distributed.org.ua materials blogs.nvidia.com:
NVIDIA Foundation Awards $400,000 to Two Teams Pioneering Cancer Research
With the support of the expert group of the National cancer Institute (National Cancer Institute) Fund NVIDIA announced the winners of the contest with a prize pool of 400 thousand dollars, which was sent more than two dozen applications from around the world. Two grants of 200 thousand dollars will get two groups of researchers, using innovative methods of computing software and hardware CUDA parallel computing architecture for NVIDIA to breathe new life into well-known ideas on the diagnosis and the cancer.
The first grant was awarded to the team of John Quackenbush (John Quackenbush), Professor of biostatistics and computational biology from the Institute of cancer "Dana-Farber" (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) in Boston, which is engaged in the processing of genomic data obtained from thousands of cancer patients to reveal regularities of manifestation of various types of cancer at the genetic level, with the aim of developing new methods of diagnosis and treatment.
In light of the trend of a sharp reduce the cost of the sequencing of the genome, cancer Institute "Dana-Farber" has launched a program for the annual gathering and deciphering genomic samples of tumors thousands of patients with detailed clinical data about how each person responds to treatment. The collected database is growing and the project coordinator, Professor John Quackenbush, plans to use NVIDIA GPUs to speed up processing and search of patterns that would allow to identify genetic subtypes of the cancer.
The researchers hope that identifying genetic similarities between different types of cancer can expand the known methods of treatment. "For example, we now have a drug that targets a specific mutation in colon cancer, but have never tried it with breast cancer," says Quackenbush. "If we detect patterns of various diseases, we will be able to more quickly identify new potential methods of treatment".
A second grant went to the team of Vijay Pande (Vijay Pande), Professor of chemistry, structural biology and computer science from Stanford University (Stanford University), which in the framework of the distributed computing project Folding@Home attracts people from all over the world to donate unused computing capacity of their computers for the benefit of scientific research.
Funds allocated Vijay Pande promising research to find methods of treatment of breast cancer. The aim is not only to potential new drug, but also the development of methods of modeling the process of self-Assembly of proteins (folding) in the three-dimensional structure. Breaches in this critical process cause serious diseases.
Project Folding@Home has managed to attract to solve their research problems, tens of thousands of users provided for remote use in scientific calculations your graphics card, creating one of the most powerful computing systems in the world. This system now used also for the study and prediction of specific mutations leading to the development of tumors. The objective is to develop targeted and effective methods of treatment, initially for breast cancer and, ultimately, for other types of cancer.
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12.12.2014