News

DUBLIN, Ireland, 25 March 2009 - IBM (NYSE: IBM)and researchers from the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute and Chiba University in Japan are launching a new World Community Grid project to discover a drug treatment for neuroblastoma, the most common cause of death in children with solid tumors. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in children only preceded by accidents.

“The World Community Grid project developed by IBM is a great idea, allowing non-profit research institutions access to far greater computing resources than what they could otherwise afford. I am particularly pleased that such resources are being used to find better ways to treat neuroblastoma – a leading cause of cancer deaths in young children.” said Professor Ray Stallings, Chair of Canacer Genetics, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Programme Leader, Cancer Genetics, Children's Research Centre, Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin. “Only through research will we find better ways of treating this often fatal disease.”

The cause of neuroblastoma is unknown, but most physicians believe that it is an accidental cell growth that occurs during normal development of the sympathetic ganglia and adrenal glands. It occurs most often the first two years of a child’s life, and has a high risk for disease relapse with survival rates less than 40 percent.

"The Irish Cancer Society, the national cancer care charity, welcomes the establishment of the Childhood Cancer Project and congratulates the World Community Grid on this innovative and progressive initiative.” said John McCormack, Chief Executive, Irish Cancer Society. Any research that explores the limitations of current treatments in Paediatric cancer or any other cancer and seeks to develop new treatment with the intention of curing is to be embraced. We also welcome the fact that this Childhood Cancer Project will ensure collaboration between cancer researchers across the globe. This has the potential to speed up the research project and the time it will take to develop these new drugs which with the aim of curing children diagnosed with neuroblastoma"

The rapid advancement of genetic research at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute holds great promise for treating neuroblastoma. The new Help Fight Childhood Cancer project uses the idle computational power from volunteer’s computers to identify which of the three million potential drug candidates prohibit growth of three proteins believed to be key in the progression of the cancer. This project could help build smarter health systems by delivering better drug treatments that could empower individuals to customize or target their therapies and treatment plans.

“Our promising research will be further advanced by the free computing power we will use from World Community Grid,” said Dr. Akira Nakagawara, the principal investigator at the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute. “It would take us about 100 years using our own computing resources to make progress, but with access to one of the world largest virtual supercomputers, we estimate to complete this project in 2 years, and begin laboratory trials.”

Dr. Nakagawara recently earned the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Fund Prize 2008 for his neuroblastoma research. In his work, he discovered that one protein, TrkB, is expressed at high levels in aggressive neuroblastomas, and enhances the tumor cell’s growth. World Community Grid will conduct complex chemistry simulations of the drug candidates to see which ones bond to TrkB, ALK and SCxx, so that those can be tested further in the laboratory. All results will be made available to the general scientific community to advance the field of cancer biology and drug discovery.

“We have the potential to find a drug treatment for one of the most common childhood cancers in our lifetime, and it’s the volunteers who sign up to allow their computers to be used coupled with innovative grid technology that can make the difference,” said Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, IBM, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation. “World Community Grid has been an innovative resource for researchers who have promising projects yet lack the funding and availability to the world’s largest supercomputers.”

To join World Community Grid, please visit: www.worldcommunitygrid.org

World Community Grid
World Community Grid is the largest public humanitarian grid in existence with more than 430,000 members who represent more than 200 countries and links to more than 1.2 million computers. It has recently provided 250 million results, that’s just under 2 results every second. It is the volunteers that help make the difference because as each one shares their computer time, scientists are able to conduct their research faster. For example, The Nutritious Rice for the World has already returned 12 million transactions and 11,000 years of compute time.

• The AfricanClimate@Home just completed its data collection and research analysis will now begin.
• Help Defeat Cancer proved their more accurate technique for identifying cancer and received a $2.5 million grant from NIH to further deploy its system.
• FightAIDS@Home has identified over 40 potential drug candidates and is proceeding with laboratory work on these.
• Discovering Dengue Drugs Together has already identified a few potential compounds and is proceeding with laboratory work.

To become of member of World Community Grid and donate unused computer time, individuals register on www.worldcommunitygrid.org and install a free, small, secure software program onto their computers. When computers are idle, data is requested from World Community Grid’s server. These computers then perform the computations, and send the results back to the server, prompting it for a new piece of work. A screen saver will tell individuals when their computers are being used.

Children’s Research Centre, Our Lady’s Hospital Crumlin
Professor Ray Stallings research group at the Children’s Research Centre and at the Royal College of Surgeons, has a major research programme on neuroblastoma.

Neuroblastoma research in Ireland is funded in part by philanthropic donations to the Children’s Medical and Research Foundation, Cancer Research Ireland, as well as by the Irish Government through Science Foundation Ireland.

Press Coverage:
Screensaver used to find cure for child cancer

For more information about IBM, please visit: www.ibm.com/ie

IBM Press Contact
Jim O’Keeffe
Media Relations, IBM Ireland
okeeffej@ie.ibm.com
+353 1 815 4124
+353 86 8542054

Text 100 Public Relations
Patricia Crowley
Account Director, Text 100
patricia.crowley@text100.com
+353 1 631 6055
+353 86 818 7233