Originally Posted: June 5, 2017
The collective brain and computer power of 25,000 “Minecraft” game players could help researchers at Southern Methodist University find a new cancer-fighting drug.
Game developers and researchers at SMU are partnering with a worldwide network of gamers who play the popular game in a crowdsourcing effort to beat the disease.
The project is being led by biochemistry professors Pia Vogel and John Wise of the SMU Department of Biological Sciences, and Corey Clark, deputy director of research at SMU Guildhall, the university’s graduate video game development program.
“Crowdsourcing as well as computational power may help us narrow down our search and give us better chances at selecting a drug that will be successful.”
Pia Vogel
“Crowdsourcing as well as computational power may help us narrow down our search and give us better chances at selecting a drug that will be successful,” Vogel said in a release. “And gamers can take pride in knowing they’ve helped find answers to an important medical problem.”
Vogel and Wise have been utilizing the university’s ManeFrame supercomputer, one of the most powerful academic supercomputers in the country, to sort through millions of compounds that potentially could work in the fight against cancer.
Now, they’re going to try crowdsourced computing. READ MORE