Hi Halo Jones,
research is a (very) long process covering, in case of WCG projects, "in silico" research activities.
The initial aim of "in silico" projects is to enable and to speed-up the identification of possible "candidates" on a very wide scale as well as to better understand particular mechanisms. Such research activities would be more or less impossible - or taking decades or centuries - if based on in vitro only.
Afterwards, it remains necessary to perform further "in vitro", "ex vivo" and at the end "in vivo" research activities.
On my side, I am not sure that relying on PETA support would be a good idea since this organisation is, for my taste, too media-oriented whereas research is at first a work requiring quietness for a long period.
Cheers,
Yves

PETA evokes strong political reactions in people which would be extremely counterproductive.

I would think that even if with these projects if animal testing is not able to be reduced the fact that we are providing a new ability of computers to do the data crunching that in the future less and less will need to be tested. Animal testing is always a hard one. everything we can do on the computer makes us know more about the proteins and such therefore we should be able at least in the future reduce and maybe eliminate animal testing

Or you could look at it the opposite way. Thanks to improvements in computer based research it is faster/cheaper/easier to identify potential compounds for further testing. So it could be argued that increased numbers of potential compounds being identified might actually increase the amount of animal testing.

Let's not get too hung up on whether it reduces animal testing or not. You could spend all day arguing the pros and cons of computer research. The bottom line is that you have a computer that is a miracle of modern technology at your disposal.

You have two choices:

a) Ignore those dead or dying from medical ailments and leave your expensive miracle of technology turned off except for when you want to watch cat videos on YouTube

or

b) Use it to try to further medical science, accepting that should your computer find a miracle cure for cancer/HIV or whatever it will almost certainly involve some animal testing at some point.

Make your choice and live with the consequences. I've made mine.