Outstanding update, Dr. Perryman! It should be model for some of our other projects. Thanks!

Dr. Perryman,

Thank you very much for the updates. I have one question. After we are through running all compounds through VINA and switch to the other Autodock, will it be GFAM phase 2 or will continue running as is now?

Hello dango and Falconet,

After the Vina calculations against target classes #21 and #22 are finished, the GFAM project will go on a long pause (for probably a couple years). During the pause, we'll continue to process, measure, and analyze the data that we have already generated (especially the screens that involve the NCI library of compounds, since we can order those compounds for free from the NIH). And we'll continue extending the collaborations that we already began against PfSUB1 (to validate it as a drug target and potentially help cure malaria infections), InhA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (to advance the treatment of extremely-drug resistant tuberculosis), and human CD81 (to try to prevent malaria infections from spreading). Hopefully, this will also allow us to generate the results for a few great research papers. After we get a paper or two published on the GFAM data, then we will try to obtain grants to fund these projects. (We need to get some papers published in these areas to more firmly establish our credibility in the anti-malaria field and the anti-tuberculosis field, according to the NIH's general perspective.) When we get some grant funding for the GFAM project (to help pay for personnel costs, purchasing the commercially-available compounds, and performing the assays of the candidate compounds from GFAM), then we will end the long pause and resume phase 2 of GFAM (which will involve AutoDock calculations of compounds that performed well with Vina and perhaps some new Vina-based virtual screens of new libraries of compounds and/or new targets).

GFAM is still an unfunded project. We need to get some grant funding in order to extend these lines of research. If you want to help increase the chances that we will be able to get some grant funding, then please contact your Senators and members of the House of Representatives (via e-mail, Twitter, FaceBook, and the telephone--using multiple media is more effective), and tell them that you are adamantly opposed to the sequester-related cuts to the NIH budget. Funding for the NIH needs to be increased, not cut drastically.

Thank you very much for your interest and your continued support,
Alex L. Perryman, Ph.D.

Hi Falconet,

You're welcome.

Thank you. I hope we get some funding for this project soon, too. But it seems like getting funding from the NIH is rather tricky these days, since the sequester cuts have not yet been resolved (and might not be resolved), and since the debt ceiling issue is going to rear its ugly head again this summer. Some politicians keep blindly demanding more and more austerity-based cuts, even though the objective evidence on it indicates that austerity measures are entirely counter-productive, in both the short term and the long term sense (especially in a consumer-based economy like the U.S.).

Thank you for your suggestion about crowd funding options. We'll have to look into that (but there might be some complicated issues regarding the overhead/indirect expenses that are associated with funding research at academic institutions). I'll try to get official approval from TSRI to allow us to try to obtain some crowd funding support.

Best wishes,
Alex L. Perryman, Ph.D.

I'll second the good wishes and continue crunching......