Malaria is one of the three deadliest infectious diseases on earth and is caused by parasites that infect both humans and animals. Female mosquitoes spread the disease by biting infected hosts and passing the parasites to other hosts that they bite later. When these parasites replicate themselves in red blood cells (which the parasites use for food), the symptoms of malaria appear. Malaria initially causes fevers and headaches, and in severe cases it leads to comas or death. Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria, kills more people than any other parasite on the planet. Over 3 billion people are at risk of being infected with malaria.

Although there are many approved drugs that are able to cure malarial infections, multi-drug-resistant mutant superbugs exist that are not eliminated by the current drugs. Because new mutant superbugs keep evolving and spreading throughout the world, discovering and developing new types of drugs that can cure infections by these multi-drug-resistant mutant strains of malaria is a significant global health priority.


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New collaboration between The Scripps Research Institute and IBM, GO Fight Against Malaria

Scripps Research, which has already used World Community Grid to discover two promising new inhibitors of HIV to advance the treatment of multi-drug-resistant AIDS, is now taking on the malaria project, as well. By tapping into World Community Grid—which turns seven years of age today—Scripps Research scientists hope to compress 100 years of computations normally necessary for the effort into just one year. The scientists will use this resource to more quickly evaluate millions of compounds that may advance the development of drugs to cure mutant, drug-resistant strains of malaria. Data from the experiments will then be made available to the public.

Working on malaria started as a hobby that I advanced during nights and weekends for a couple years, when I wasn’t working on FightAIDS@Home, said Alex L. Perryman, Ph.D., a research associate in Scripps Research Professor Arthur Olson’s lab (http://mgl.scripps.edu). With persistence and a lot of help from IBM and from fellow Scripps Research scientists, we are now ready to launch the largest computational research project ever performed against drug-resistant malaria.

Said Stanley S. Litow, IBM vice president of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, and President of IBM's International Foundation:




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Experiments we're performing and our future plans

Current and future GO FAM experiments
(% completion statistics from December 3, 2012)


In general, most scientific researchers closely guard the details of their current and future experiments. It's all kept secret, until the research has been completed and published. Revealing the finer details of future experiments is never done, because researchers don't want other scientists to scoop them and publish the research before they do.

But we will ignore that rule--advancing the fight against multi-drug-resistant mutant superbugs of malaria is far too important; keeping everything secret would slow down our progress.

In addition, by disclosing the details of our current and future GO FAM experiments, we are hoping to motivate and inspire other malaria researchers to plan their projects in a way that can complement the research we are performing on World Community Grid, instead of trying to compete against it.



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