Scientists in London are using networks of
supercomputers to test a treatment for HIV.
The computing method, called the
Virtual
Physiological Human (VPH), links networks of computers across
the world to simulate the internal workings of the human body. It
can then be used to simulate the effects of a drug.
Scientists at University College London are using the
supercomputing power of the US and UK national grids to test
the effectiveness of an HIV drug in blocking a key protein used by
the lethal virus.
Peter Coveney, from UCL's department of chemistry, said that
although nine drugs are currently available to inhibit the HIV
virus, doctors have no way of matching a drug to the unique profile
of the virus as it mutates in each patient. Instead, they prescribe
a course of drugs and then test whether these are working by
analysing the patient's immune response.
A new approach
One of the goals of VPH is for such "trial and error" methods to
eventually be replaced by patient-specific treatments tailored to a
person's unique genotype.
This study involved a sequence of simulation steps, performed
across several supercomputers on the UK's
National Grid Service
and the US TeraGrid, which
took two weeks and used computational power roughly equivalent to
that needed to perform a long-range weather forecast.
Coveney said, "This study represents a first step towards the
ultimate goal of 'on-demand' medical computing, where doctors could
one day 'borrow' supercomputing time from the national grid to make
critical decisions on life-saving treatments.
"We have some difficult questions ahead of us, such as how much
of our computing resources could be devoted to helping patients and
at what price. At present, such simulations - requiring a
substantial amount of computing power - might prove costly for the
National Health Service, but technological advances and those in
the economics of computing would bring costs down."