World Community Grid is pleased to announce the launch of the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project by Dr. Stan Watowich and his research team at The University of Texas Medical Branch (Galveston, Texas, USA). They are collaborating with researchers from the Galveston National Laboratory at UTMB (Galveston, Texas, USA) for testing of drug candidates. The mission of the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project is to find new drugs that can stop the spread of an influenza infection in the body. The research will specifically address the influenza strains that have become drug resistant as well as new strains that are appearing. Identifying the chemical compounds that are the best candidates will accelerate the efforts to develop treatments that would be useful in managing seasonal influenza outbreaks, and future influenza epidemics and even pandemics. For more information click here.

Project Badge
If a member contributes a minimum of 14 days of CPU Run Time to this project, they will receive an Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project badge on their member statistics page and next to their member name when they post in the forums. There is a different badge for each research project and beta testing. To read more about badges, click here.

Forums
In addition to providing information about this project, we have created a forum for discussions about the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project. To participate in this forum, please press the Forums button in the upper navigation bar or click here. Only forum authors with the title " Influenza Antiviral Drug Search and Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together Scientist" are authorized to comment as representatives of the research organization: The University of Texas Medical Branch (Galveston, Texas, USA).

Project Participation
Influenza Antiviral Drug Search is the thirteenth research project to be launched on World Community Grid and one of eight projects currently active. The other seven active research projects are: Help Conquer Cancer (launched November, 2007), Discover Dengue Drugs – Together (launched August, 2007), Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (launched July, 2006), FightAIDS@Home Phase 2 (launched November, 2005), Nutritious Rice for the World (Launched May, 2008), The Clean Energy Project (launched December, 2008) and Help Fight Childhood Cancer (launched March, 2009) . For more detailed information and FAQs about each of these projects, please click on the Research button in the upper navigation bar or click here. We thank all of our members for their valuable contributions to the projects to date and hope you will continue to help us process those, as well as this latest project.

Because there are eight research projects running on World Community Grid, your grid software could receive workunits from any of the projects depending on your Project profile. If you prefer, you may elect to focus your computer's time only on particular projects. To do so, press the My Grid button in the upper navigation bar and select My Projects or click here. Work is sent only to machines which meet minimum system requirements set for a particular project. To read more specifics on the system requirements for the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project and the other projects, click here.

Questions?
If you have any questions, World Community Grid provides you with four methods of obtaining assistance: (1) Review the FAQs found in the HELP section of the website; (2) Review the forums to see if anyone has asked/answered the question that you have; (3) Ask the question in World Community Grid's Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project forum found here and a Community Advisor or a more experienced member will provide an answer; or (4) Send an email to the support desk from the Contact Us link found at the bottom of every page of the website (except in the forums).

We thank you for contributing to the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project