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	Tuesday 3rd April 2001 Could You Help In The Battle Against Cancer? A computer screensaver is to be launched today that will help scientists find a cure for cancer. Even though the whole thing sounds too good to be true, and more like an April Fool, Oxford University and an American technology company are involved in the project that is based at Oxford University but being launched in California today and aims to reach millions of home computers around the world, reports the BBC. If it is successful, several years could be knocked off the search for new cancer drugs. The screensaver can be downloaded for free from United Devices, the company behind the Seti@home project, which uses unused computing power to search for extraterrestrial life in space. It is estimated that office workers may only be using 20 per cent of the power available on their pc. Software has been developed which enables the spare capacity of PCs to be used to screen molecules for potential anti-cancer activity. If everyone takes part, a type of ‘virtual super computer’ will be created that will be able to screen up to 250 million chemicals and send the information back to a central server. It would take decades for a single computer to do the same. The technique is called peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, and was developed by a US charity – the National Foundation for Cancer research, and two US companies – United Devices and Intel. Each computer that subscribes will receive a pack containing 100 molecules over the Internet, a drug-design software application called Think and a model of a target protein known to be involved in causing cancer. Think will weigh up how good the molecules are at fighting cancer and test their interactions with the target protein. If a molecule reacts successfully with the protein, it will be sent to a central further to be tested further. Professor Graham Richards, director of the Centre for Drug Discovery at Oxford University, said: ‘People now have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the disease by donating their unused computer power, which will enable us to accelerate our programme of research, and come up with many new molecular candidates that could be developed into cancer drugs.’ Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices, said, ‘Internet distributed computing allows scientists and organisations to consider projects previously considered impossible due to resource constraints, including time and money. Essentially, the technology enables the first steps towards Star Trek medicine.’ Professor Michael Steinberg, head of the biomolecular-modelling laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, said lengthy laboratory research would be needed on the candidates before any anti-cancer drugs were developed. For details of how to download the software click here.