It's official - “Influenza Antiviral Drug Search - Phase 1” is done!

Similar to our related “Discovering Dengue Drugs-Together” project, all Phase 1 results that you have generated to help find new influenza antivirals are on our disk servers. They are being processed and double-checked. Thank you for your efforts and help!

Phase 1 is only the first step on our path to discovering new influenza drugs. Phase 1 has systematically tested ~3 million small "drug-like" molecules against 9 influenza neuraminidase strains (including Tamiflu-resistant and Relenza-resistant strains). These 27 million individual docking experiments were completed in ~5 months. Our 30-node high-performance cluster would have needed to run nonstop for 100 years to finish these calculations.

Phase 1 identified numerous that could potentially interact with each neuraminadase target. Typically, ~90-95% of Phase 1 “hits” turn out to be false positives when tested in the laboratory. Thus, Phase 1 hits are very inefficient to pursue with laboratory testing.

“Influenza Antiviral Drug Search - Phase 2” is designed to reduce the number of Phase 1 false positives. In Phase 2, we will complete ~2000 computationally demanding free energy calculations for each protein target (each calculation uses a promising Phase 1 hit)s. These calculations will eliminate many of the Phase 1 false positives and produce refined hit lists that are expected to contain ~80% true positives. Testing Phase 2 hits in the laboratory will be much more productive, efficient, and rewarding than testing Phase 1 hits.

Beta testing is underway for “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Phase 2”. The programs and workflow required for ”Influenza Antiviral Drug Search - Phase 2” are similar to the dengue project. Thus, “Influenza Drug Search - Phase 2” should launch soon after “Discovering Dengue Drugs - Phase 2” starts.

We look forward to your continued help and generosity as we work together to find new cures for influenza infections.

All my best, and many thanks!

Stan

P.S. Although completed, IADS-1 will remain officially active on the grid. From time to time, we will need to test additional drug targets to help refine our evolving drug predictions, so do not be surprised if new IADS-1 workunits occasionally show up in your cache.