Schistosomiasis, or bilharzia, is tropical disease caused by parasitic worms in a highly evolved cycle that progresses through multiple hosts during its lifecycle. Starting as a larvae in in shallow freshwater or wetlands, it then infects a snail as an intermediary host, and then matures into a fluke or worm in humans. Next to malaria, it is one of the most devastating tropical illnesses, affecting more than 207 million people, and killing 200,000 annually. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its socioeconomic devastation.
Part of the fight against Schistosomiasis is identifying drug compounds that have the capability of disabling proteins essential for the parasite's survival. A program called VINA from The Scripps Research Institute in California, will be used to perform the virtual chemistry experiments, using donated distributed computer time (Similar to SETI online). With enough donated computing time, this task can be completed in approximately 1 year, and will be published in the public domain.
If you are interested in running this program in the background on your computer, visit this webpage for more information:
https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/research/sn2s/overview.do
Screening for the best potential drug compounds is an early step in the process of developing more effective treatments for the disease. With enough computing power, this screening can be done much more quickly than using conventional laboratory experiments.
More information is available here:
http://www.ajol.info/index.php/wsa/article/viewFile/49202/35545