In compliance with World Community Grid policy, the researchers will make their data openly accessible, thereby allowing other scientists to apply their own methods and approaches to further study promising compounds. The open data component of this project (and all other World Community Grid projects) means that the likelihood of finding effective drug treatments for Zika may be higher than if the researchers worked in isolation.

Project Goal
The main goal of the OpenZika project is to screen millions of compounds from existing databases against homology models of Zika protein structures as well as against experimentally determined Zika protein structures, as soon as these are known.

These screening results will all be made publicly available, opening the door for other scientists to also use these data to help develop Zika treatments.

I am very fortunate that Carolina and Alex have agreed to volunteer their time as well to get this off the ground - without them this would not have happened because as a company I could not have done this WCG project. That was clear from the outset. I had the idea and the motivation but Carolina and Alex have the facilities and expertise to make this happen. Please support us as we and our collaborators try to identify drugs active against Zika ASAP. We need YOU!

I have a question regarding the ethics and legitimacy of this project for BOINC.

Reading about the OpenZika project, I noticed one of the lead principal researchers is CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. This piqued my curiosity. I did a little research on this company. It is a for profit biotech research company.

I've been involved in a number of BOINC projects. It's always been my understanding that all projects are OPEN, academic and/or govt. sponsored but not associated with for profit companies. The knowledge gained from BOINC projects is suppose to be for the equal benefit of all researchers world-wide.

Collaborations, it appears, partners with numerous not for profit research facilities at medical universities. For a for profit research company isn't that akin to insider trading?

Collaborations is in the business of not only computational investigations, but taking those findings and advancing them to clinical stage trials and ultimately to successful drugs/vaccines.

This gives Sean Ekins’ company an unfair advantage over all the other companies trying to find answers for Zika.

As the article states "Our work on World Community Grid is only the first step in the larger project of discovering a new drug to fight the Zika virus. Next, we will analyze the data obtained from World Community Grid’s virtual screening to choose the compounds that show the most promise. After we have selected and tested compounds that could be effective in killing the Zika virus, we will publish our results.”

I own shares in 3 different bio-tech companies that are working on the Zika virus and have been since the outbreak in 2015. Some who have also been working on ebola and dengue for several years. They'd be at a disadvantage getting this information AFTER Ekins company has had the information for some time before it's published. It could be many months, to years, in advance of the rest of the research community. They could begin investigating the first compounds as they complete project testing that show promising results. Everyone one else will only get that information after millions have been put through the entire process.

It seems to me that some researchers, who have previously worked on other BOINC projects, have now gone on to advising and working in major roles with new projects, while associated with or having founded their own private for profit companies, taking advantage of their "inside" information.

THIS IS USING BOINC FOR PRIVATE FINANCIAL GAIN---completely against the principals which it was developed for and why most of us volunteer our computers computational power and time.

If I've evaluated this incorrectly, I'd appreciate someone clarifying it for me.

Although I think the Zika virus needs an all out effort by everyone, I won't be volunteering my computer for this project until I'm sure this isn't a round about way of using us and our computers for private advantage and gain.