As I understand it, there is a lot more the FightAIDS@Home team want to do.

Just goes to prove that, although as yet, no end-user drugs have come out of the crunching contributions we've all volunteered, progress is being made and that our efforts aren't all in vain

Hello Se Parle,

As long as HIV is a serious public health problem, the FightAIDS@Home team will keep performing experiments that help advance the global struggle against HIV/AIDS.

We recently submitted plans for another 5 experiments that will encompass approximately 5,000 additional packages (with each package corresponding to 1,000 independent docking jobs). We will be using different libraries of compounds in these new virtual screens (that is, sets of compounds we have not yet explored on FightAIDS@Home). After these 5 million docking jobs (with 1 job representing docking a single compound versus one conformation/one shape of a known drug target), we will probably submit plans for a few additional experiments focused on the drug target "HIV protease." HIV protease has been the target of all of the experiments that have been performed on FightAIDS@Home.

While we analyze, interpret, test, and extend these experiments against HIV protease with our wet-lab collaborators at TSRI, we will most likely start performing new experiments on FightAIDS@Home against another drug target from AIDS called "HIV integrase." During the last year-and-a-half, we developed new protocols that allow us to produce very accurate models of HIV integrase. (We are currently revising a manuscript on these results so that we can submit it for publication.)

There is only one FDA-approved drug that targets HIV integrase. The drug Raltegravir was approved in 2007, but several different drug-resistant mutants that significantly reduce the effectiveness of Raltegravir already exist in patients. We recently built models of the normal/"wild type" version of HIV integrase and of two of the most Raltegravir-resistant mutants. We plan to use these models in future experiments on FightAIDS@Home, to try to find new types of inhibitors that will work well against these drug-resistant mutants of HIV integrase.

We need to find many different, new drugs that will work well against all of the drug-resistant mutants of key components of HIV. We need to do this to help treat the patients who currently have drug-resistant HIV/AIDS infections, and we need to come up with new strategies that make it much more difficult for new drug-resistant mutants of HIV to evolve.

Thank you all very much for helping us in the fight against AIDS,
Dr. Alex Perryman