Folding@Home pets

[user123]

Is it possible for F@H to contribute some effort to curing diseases/cancers of not humans, but pets (domestic cats, dogs etc.)? I know human and animal diseases/cancers are different, but they both have things in common that F@H can help to cure right?

Who knows, if F@H helps find a cure for an animal disease/cancer, maybe that knowledge can lead to curing some debilitating human disease/cancer?

[kiore]

This already occurs, FAH is really doing pure science rather than developing specific drugs and treatments so the information gained can have benefits across the board.
Also some viruses effecting humans such as influenza are common and even native to some non human animals. As far as I know chemotherapy to treat tumours is similar for whatever mammal, I have seen dogs treated with drugs that are similar to those used on humans. I have limited veterinary experience but certainly the antibiotics are the same.

[Jesse_V]

This already occurs, FAH is really doing pure science rather than developing specific drugs and treatments so the information gained can have benefits across the board.
Also some viruses effecting humans such as influenza are common and even native to some non human animals. As far as I know chemotherapy to treat tumours is similar for whatever mammal, I have seen dogs treated with drugs that are similar to those used on humans. I have limited veterinary experience but certainly the antibiotics are the same.

Exactly. Folding@home is doing a lot of general research. I see no reason why proteins in animals couldn't misfold and cause very similar issues. There's a focus on fixing the underlying causes for our diseases of course, but as with chemotherapy the knowledge and results can trickle down to animals.

There are some very specific molecular reasons why some strains of influenza infect mainly other animals and not humans. It's a bit technical, but the first paragraph of Combining molecular dynamics with Bayesian analysis to predict and evaluate ligand-binding mutations in influenza hemagglutinin (2010) is related:

Influenza attaches to host cells by binding cell-surface glycans via the viral hemagglutinin protein. Influenza hemagglutinin binds glycans in a species-specific manner: avian strains of influenza selectively bind glycans found in the avian upper respiratory tract, while human strains selectively bind human upper respiratory tract glycans. Changes to this specificity are considered among the key factors required for efficient transmission of avian influenza between humans. In contrast, recent transmission between swine and humans is eased by the marked similarity between swine and human upper respiratory tract glycans. Structural studies of H1N1 influenza from 1918 implicate specificity changes in the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, and retrospective characterizations of H5N1 avian influenza isolates from humans find mutations that shift H5N1 to an intermediate specificity between avian-type and human-type glycans.

[Napoleon]

Exactly. Folding@home is doing a lot of general research. I see no reason why proteins in animals couldn't misfold and cause very similar issues. There's a focus on fixing the underlying causes for our diseases of course, but as with chemotherapy the knowledge and results can trickle down to animals.

FAH Diseases FAQ mentions BSE (aka Mad Cow Disease). While it currently isn't listed under diseases being studied by FAH, at least there's an example where better general understanding of protein (mis)folding is needed, human and animal alike. Quote from the Wikipedia BSE article I linked to:

The disease may be most easily transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses.[3] However, it should also be noted that the infectious agent, although most highly concentrated in nervous tissue, can be found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including blood.[4] In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD)
...
The infectious agent in BSE is believed to be a specific type of misfolded protein called a prion.

[user123]

I hope the results from Folding@Home can also be used to treat animal cancers.
One of my cats died from cancer