West Nile Distributed Computing Project
IBM’s World Community Grid has teamed up with scientists at UTMB in Galveston, Texas to help search for drugs that can cure a family of diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile encephalitis, hepatitis C, and yellow fever. The project is called “Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together”. The fact that this project is targeting the West Nile virus has hit home with those of us living in the south where West Nile has been flaring up over the past few years. Researchers say it will take about 50,000 years of computing time to help run all of the drug molecules against the various virus variants but by using distributed computing formed by volunteers who join the World Community Project and process workunits for the project, the project should take about a year. This should give scientists a fair number of drug candidates that can affect the virus and eventually lead to actual vaccines. I’ve started moving many of my machines to help crunch workunits on this project since I think this is an important project and the faster it runs the faster the scientists can get on with the task of testing the drug molecules that are found through this process. So, join up today and help find candidate drugs for West Nile and other viruses in its family. As a side note, make sure you download the BOINC client instead of the United Devices (UD) client from World Community Grid as the “Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together” project only runs on the BOINC client.
A lot more information can be found directly on the UTMB DDD-T website where they will post project status updates and other information as the project progresses.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
We’ve already gotten there.
My company developed (and owns a pending patent for) a safe and apparently quite effective treatment for WNV encephalitis, and has been using it in an ongoing free clinical trial for the past 5 summers.
Our initial results on 8 patients seen in Sept, 2003 were published in a peer-reviewed medical journal in July, 2004 (1). Publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal is all that’s required for a treatment to officially exist.
Our approach lowers the host’s response to the virus–the so-called “cytokine storm”–rather than targeting the virus itself. So it may work for most viruses as a kind of general viral antidote.
I was asked to describe our treatment to the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy (OSTP) in June, 2004. I volunteered to brief the Dept of Homeland Security later that summer. The UN is aware of our treatment in the context of avian influenza. It was included in the Project BioShield II Act of 2005, co-sponsored by Senators Lieberman, Hatch, and Brownback (2).
The FDA is happy for our trial to proceed, since we use already FDA-approved medications which are known to be safe for the general population.
I recently described our treatment on Friday, August 3rd, at the BARDA Industry Day hosted by the Dept of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC (3).
The only agency not supportive of our efforts is the CDC, for reasons known only to them.
21 patients with WNV have responded so far, out of 25 (84%). We’ve also treated 4 horses (3 responded) and 12 birds (6 responded; birds present sicker than humans and horses). Our WNV trial is free from our end. The blood pressure meds we use are inexpensive (around $1/day) and are available by prescription from any drugstore in the country.
Anybody who wants to download our trial documents can do so for free at any time of day or night from our homepage at http://www.genomed.com.
Beginning treatment early–within the first 48 hrs of encephalitis symptoms–seems to be the only way to avoid long-term sequelae such as paralysis, chronic fatigue, “brain fog,” etc. WNV is notorious for still affecting half of WNV victims 18 months later.
If a family knows about our treatment ahead of time, they’ll be in a much better position to get it prescribed for their relative who comes down with the disease.
Thanks to the inexplicable behavior of the CDC, who’ve redefined public health in the same way FEMA redefined rescue, neither physicians nor patients have heard about our treatment for the fifth year in a row.
Could you please rectify this situation? The people you serve depend on you to do so.
References
1. Moskowitz DW, Johnson FE. The central role of angiotensin I-converting enzyme in vertebrate pathophysiology. Curr Top Med Chem. 2004;4(13):1433-54. PMID: 15379656 (For PDF file, click on paper #6 at: http://www.genomed.com/index.cfm?action=investor&drill=publications)
2. Section 2151 of the Project BioShield II Act of April 28, 2005 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-975)
3. http://www.hhs.gov/disasters/press/newsroom/spotlight/2007bardaday.html
Sincerely,
Dave Moskowitz MD
Chairman, CEO & Chief Medical Officer
GenoMed, Inc.
“Our business is public health(TM)”
website: http://www.genomed.com
Ticker symbol: GMED.PK (on the OTC Pink Sheets)
email: dwmoskowitz@genomed.com
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:43 pm
This is certainly the first time I’ve ever heard about this treatment. I’m sure the World Community Grid project still has a lot of importance to it since it is trying to target several viruses in the Flaviviridae family and not only WNV although the reason I’m mainly interested in the project is because of WNV. I’ve approved your comment so others can reference it.