Dear Saul,

Thanks for your long standing interest and support of FightAIDS@Home. As Bill Boverman informed you, the project has certainly not ended, but rather with the help of World Community Grid, is moving ahead at about 100 times the previous pace. The progress that we made on the original FAAH network (of which you were a much appreciated member), was very significant and important in the progress of our research. We were able to demonstrate that with the FAAH computational power we could discriminate how a given drug would bind to variants of the HIV protease. We were also able to test and validate the parameters that we use for all of our current dockings. Moreover we have used the FAAH grid to help discover new lead approaches to generating novel HIV inhibitors. These leads are based upon the so called "click chemistry" approach pioneered by our collaborator, Nobel laureate Barry Sharpless. A paper describing these results has been accepted, and will be published early in 2006.

So, indeed, thanks to volunteers like you, the original FAAH members have contributed significantly to our progress, and have set the stage for the new research that we are undertaking with World Community Grid.

with much appreciation,

Arthur Olson

>Thank you very much for your answer Dr. Olson, since you must be a >very busy Scientist and took the time to answer a simple member of >the huge grid, thank you, I appreciate your time. I'm glad that all
>the time and energy of my computer wasn't for nothing and instead
>helped to medical & biochemistry science to cure the plagues of our >time. Dr. just one more thing is this grid effort means that drugs
>to cure these disease will be cheaper & will be "delivered" to the
>sick ones faster? (Sorry, I had to ask). And finally, can I publish
>this in the WCG Forum?


Saul,

You may certainly publish our correspondence on the WCG Forum. There may be many other long time FAAH members who want to know what progress they have contributed to. With regard to your question about cheaper more available drug to treat AIDS, that is certainly our goal. As with most research, however, we cannot know the outcome ahead of time!

with best regards,

Arthur Olson