Many scientists and companies worldwide are looking for therapies and the most important weapon in the fight against SARS-CoV-2: a vaccine. I will describe and assess the current state of affairs in a separate article.
However, this search mainly requires the following three things:
1. Capable and hard-working scientists and companies from the Area of life sciences.
2. Money. Tons of it, but still a fraction of it, what nonsensical and misplanned projects, saving the many investment banks or the lively annual arms upgrade.
3. Computing power. Many calculations, eg how proteins fold (what which receptors are important for their correct function) how strong they bind and what happens then and much more be modeled or simulated to be more targeted can. Especially with the current crisis, in which every day counts. Unfortunately computing power is limited or not accessible to everyone. This is exactly where the Folding @ Home (FAH) project started in 2000 by Stanford University and is now being continued by the Washington University School of Medicine project in St. Louis. The ingenious principle: every interested citizen (or new German citizen scientist) can download and install a client (a small piece of software) from the page linked above. This client then provides various projects for the research of such bad diseases as cancer, Parkinson’s, but also Covid-19 the necessary computing power of the home PC in order to be able to carry out the many calculations faster. Whenever your PC simply does nothing or you switch it on and then of course start the client, small sub-projects are automatically downloaded and calculated (you can set how much of your computing power should be used for this and whether the whole thing is only in idle mode or also happens while you are working on the PC) and then transmits the finished result to the researchers. So a large network of computers is created, in principle a decentralized supercomputer. The name comes from one of the main tasks of this tool: the calculation of the possible folding of individual drug candidates, which are often proteins. A very important calculation because only correctly folded proteins do what they should and incorrectly folded proteins can even cause illness. The use is super simple and is also well described on the corresponding website. If you want to know how and when you can participate directly in the research on Covid-19, I recommend reading the following FAQ page: [FAQ] SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) projects and FAH I ask for it, numerous to join in, especially if your PC often just hums. Everything else is just wasted computing power and electricity. We all have to pull together, because without medication and vaccines, this pandemic will last forever. Thank you and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
