---
title: "World Community Grid"
chunk: 4/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Community_Grid"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:26:35.746920+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== OpenPandemics - COVID-19 ===
On April 1, 2020, IBM announced OpenPandemics - COVID-19. The project aims to identify possible treatments for the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. WCG will partner with Scripps Research, with whom it has partnered in the past, notably in FightAIDS@Home projects. The project runs on CPUs and GPUs and will also serve to create a "fast-response, open source tool that will help all scientists quickly search for treatments for future pandemics."
The project launched on May 14, 2020.

=== Mapping Cancer Markers ===
Mapping Cancer Markers (launched November 8, 2013). The project aims to identify the markers associated with various types of cancer, and is analyzing millions of data points collected from thousands of healthy and cancerous patient tissue samples. These include tissues with lung, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic and breast cancers. By comparing these different data points, researchers aim to identify patterns of markers for different cancers and correlate them with different outcomes, including responsiveness to various treatment options. The project is focusing on 4 types of cancer, with the first focus being on lung cancer, and will move on to ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and sarcoma.

=== Africa Rainfall Project ===
The Africa Rainfall Project (launched October 2019) will use the computing power of World Community Grid, data from The Weather Company, and other data to improve rainfall modelling, which can help farmers in sub-Saharan Africa successfully raise their crops.
The amount of RAM that can be involved in calculations is from 1 to 16 gigabytes.

== Completed subprojects ==

=== Human Proteome Folding – Phase 1 ===

The first project launched on World Community Grid was the Human Proteome Folding Project, or HPF1, which aims to predict the structure of human proteins. The project was launched on November 16, 2004, and completed on July 18, 2006. This project was unique in that computation was done in tandem with the grid.org distributed computing project. Devised by Richard Bonneau at the Institute for Systems Biology, the project used grid computing to produce the likely structures for each of the proteins using a Rosetta Score. From these predictions, researchers hope to predict the function of the myriad proteins. This increased understanding of the human proteins could prove vital in the search for cures to human diseases. Computing for this project was officially completed on July 18, 2006.  Research results for the yeast portion of HPF1 have been published.

=== Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 ===

Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (HPF2) (launched June 23, 2006) was the third project to run on World Community Grid, and completed in 2013. This project, following on from HPF1, focused on human-secreted proteins, with special focus on biomarkers and the proteins on the surface of cells as well as Plasmodium, the organism that causes malaria. HPF2 generates higher-resolution protein models than HPF1. Though these higher-resolution models are more useful, they also require more processing power to generate.
In a July 2012 status report, the project scientists reported that the results generated by the WCG calculations are being used by Dr. Markus Landthaler of the Max Delbruch Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin. The HPF2 results helped Dr. Markus Landthaler and his collaborators in writing up a new paper on "The mRNA-Bound Proteome and Its Global Occupancy Profile on Protein-Coding Transcripts"

=== Help Defeat Cancer ===

The Help Defeat Cancer project seeks to improve the ability of medical professionals to determine the best treatment options for patients with breast, head, or neck cancer. The project was launched on July 20, 2006, and completed in April 2007. The project worked by identifying visual patterns in large numbers of tissue microarrays taken from archived tissue samples. By correlating the pattern data with information about treatment and patient outcome, the results of this project could help provide better targeted treatment options.

=== Genome Comparison ===

The Genome Comparison project is sponsored by the Brazilian research institution Fiocruz. The project was launched on November 21, 2006, and completed on July 21, 2007. The project seeks to compare gene sequences of different organisms against each other in order to find similarities between them.  Scientists hope to discover what purpose a particular gene sequence serves in a particular function of one organism, via comparing it to a similar gene sequence of known function in another organism.

=== Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 1 ===

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy is run by Décrypthon, a collaboration between French Muscular Dystrophy Association, French National Center for Scientific Research and IBM. Phase 1 was launched on December 19, 2006, and completed on June 11, 2007. The project investigated protein–protein interactions for 40,000 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases. This project was available only to agents running the Grid MP client, making it unavailable to users running BOINC.

=== Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together ===

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together was sponsored by scientists at the University of Texas and the University of Chicago and will run in two phases. Phase 1, launched August 21, 2007, used AutoDock 2007 (the same software used for FightAIDS@Home) to test potential antiviral drugs (through NS3 protease inhibition) against viruses from the family flaviviridae and completed on August 11, 2009. Phase 2 "[uses] a more computationally intensive program to screen the candidates that make it through Phase 1." The drug candidates that make it through Phase 2 will then be lab-tested.