Folding Forum

Hello fellow folders and members of the Pande Group.

Folding@Home is quite the program. It has been running for 11 years now (I'm an active folder for a little over 2 years) and has done some marvelous things in my opinion. We can only imagine what will be possible in the next 11 years.

Many of you reading will probably agree with me that the most of us are folding to cure cancer (and possibly some other diseases). I know there is a big community of anti-Huntington/Alzheimer folders (atlasfolder for one). Still, most of us think cancer is the primary disease which should be tackled.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not asking to suddenly focus most of your attention on cancer. I am actually for research into a wide variety of diseases and was not 'angry' because all Bigadv and most SMP projects relate to viral diseases. I actually encourage the PG to tackle a wider variety of diseases, but that is a different discussion.

Now, back to cancer. At this moment, I only know one active cancer related project (7600). The latest paper about cancer/p53 was released in 2006, and currently there are no projects relating to this protein to my knowledge. So I ask, together with many of my fellow folders, to develop more projects tackling cancer. It is one of the most deadly diseases in this world, and many of us have lost friends and family members to this awful disease. I realize cancer is not one disease but rather a group of diseases, so we would all understand that not all of these projects can target multiple cancers at once.
This may not be the best reason, but doing active research into cancer could be great publicity for the F@H and lure more folders.

I hope you will listen to my plea and don't forget, fold on!

I second that plea. Thanks JonazzDJ for bringing it up.

I understand that Alzheimers and viruses have some interesting aspects that work well with F@h. But I would argue that cancer is more devestating than Alzheimer's, mostly because its horrible disease that can be deadly to children. I mean all diseases are bad, but when one can slowly destroy a child before they've had a chance to enjoy life and have children. Even if they recover, it can scar them mentally and physically for life. Current treatments are really imprecise, and technologies that are more targetted such as CyberKnife aren't available for children. Believe me, my 11-year-old sister ran out of options and we were essentially presented with end of life options. We found some alternative methods that extended her life by at least a year, but it was not enough. Death by cancer is even more horrible than death by Alzheimers, because your completely aware of your pain and conditions, and can remember everything. I've learned about F@h's remarkable progress in cancer and how it produced papers that were the first cancer-related works from a DC project using results that were previously unobtainable, but considering that more than half of all known cancers result from a misfolding of p53, I urge you to launch more cancer projects. Think of the impact to a donor and their friends if they saw that they were working on cancer-related proteins.

I plus one this thread.

+1
I also agree with that, more projects with a cancer target is a good idea !
I am currently supporting a close friend who suffers from a myeloblastic leukemia resistant to conventional treatment. See a man 39 years
father of two children (6 and 3 years) probably condemned, is very difficult (Jesse_V and MtM know what I mean because they have answered one of my post with great kindness).

I'm glad to see more people are supporting this idea!

Sorry if I'm 3 months late, just came across this thread, and I can't agree more! +1 to this thread. My primary reason for folding is to contribute to cancer research (although I also strongly support research on Alzheimer's, Huntington's, etc.), and I can't help but feel that it hasn't been given enough priority by PG.

At this moment, I only know one active cancer related project (7600)

Where can I find this info? I'd like to know which disease my rig is researching on

iceman1992 wrote:Where can I find this info? I'd like to know which disease my rig is researching on

If you're using the v7 client, make sure it is set to "advanced" or "expert". Then press the "preferences" button, which is the second one on the top. Tick the third box, "Show Project Info in Advanced" and press save. Then there should be a box on the bottom of the client showing you some information on the project that you are folding and have selected.

Meh_Lay_Lay wrote:

iceman1992 wrote:Where can I find this info? I'd like to know which disease my rig is researching on

If you're using the v7 client, make sure it is set to "advanced" or "expert". Then press the "preferences" button, which is the second one on the top. Tick the third box, "Show Project Info in Advanced" and press save. Then there should be a box on the bottom of the client showing you some information on the project that you are folding and have selected.

Project descriptions are shown in Novice mode as well. You can also set that control from Novice mode as well, no need to go to Advanced/Expert. They should be displayed by default anyway.

BTW, I see no real reason why general biochemical research can't apply to studies of disease-relevant proteins. So even if the specific project doesn't seem to be focused on diseases, the research can be used elsewhere. That being said, I'd really like to see more of a focus on cancer projects. According to the Diseases FAQ, Lillian Chong, Del Lucent, and Andrej Sali's lab seem to be the ones that have been leading the way in the cancer research.

We have just started a cancer-related project in house. While it's not on FAH just yet (we are doing a pilot project), there's a good chance it will make its way to FAH if the pilot works out well.

Great news!

VijayPande wrote:We have just started a cancer-related project in house. While it's not on FAH just yet (we are doing a pilot project), there's a good chance it will make its way to FAH if the pilot works out well.

Glad to hear that

At this moment, I only know one active cancer related project (7600)

I don't know if this: (Projects 8041 and 8042) is the one Dr. Pande is referring to or if there are more expected soon.

VijayPande wrote:We have just started a cancer-related project in house. While it's not on FAH just yet (we are doing a pilot project), there's a good chance it will make its way to FAH if the pilot works out well.

bruce wrote:I don't know if this: (Projects 8041 and 8042) is the one Dr. Pande is referring to or if there are more expected soon.

Are those projects 8041 and 8042 active right now? Hopefully many more will come.

iceman1992 wrote:

bruce wrote:I don't know if this: (Projects 8041 and 8042) is the one Dr. Pande is referring to or if there are more expected soon.

Are those projects 8041 and 8042 active right now? Hopefully many more will come.

They are on psummary, which is a list of currently running projects.