Are there a finite number of molecules you are testing as protease inhibitors? How will you know when you are done with this phase of the number crunching? I understand that anything that docks well would still need to be tested for efficacy etc...

I understand that will be a lot of time, before any drug will be shiped.
But I'm a little suprised, there is no officials massages on the forum from scientist. I preciate your work, admins, but as I can see you are writing always: in some article, on this page etc. etc. If over 100,000 people is volountering their computers, one of the scientisc working with this project would write few words from time to time on dedicatet tread.
(Sorry if I missed something on forum, then correct me, and remember I preciane your work admins much)

This is a project with a lot of computing ahead of it; we are just now getting our first few results back from our FightAIDS@Home members--thank you all!

These results will begin to tell us which small molecules are likely to be most promising inhibitors of both the "wild type" HIV protease and the 200 or so mutant proteases we are also investigating. As we analyse these early results, we start to get a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. We can't really answer your questions until all the pieces come back, and we can see the whole picture at once. Then we will be able to say which molecules look really promising.

At that stage, we will be able to have the best compounds tested in vitro ("in the test tube") and in cell culture by our collaborating laboratories here at The Scripps Research Institute. The compounds that actually do inhibit HIV protease in the test tube will be the true "hits", and assuming we actually do find some that do inhibit HIV protease, you can be assured you will hear about them.

As you may have read from Prof. Olson's reply to the thread "Who is likely to develop and distribute the drugs we contribute to?", going from inhibitors to drugs requires a very different organisation than a non-profit research institute.

We will be preparing reports in the meantime, to keep everyone informed of our (collective) computational progress. The more people who join, the faster we can get through our first round of potential HIV protease inhibitors (so tell your friends!)

Thank you everyone who is helping!

Dr. Garrett M. Morris
Staff Scientist
Olson Laboratory, The Scripps Research Institute

P.S. The "mgl_" in "mgl1" and "mgl_garrett" stands for "Molecular Graphics Laboratory"; this is another name for the Olson Laboratory.

It's always interesting to see feedback from the project scientists. It makes me understand the meaning of such projects just a little bit more. Thanks!