Grid.org

grid.org was a website and online community established in 2001 for cluster computing and grid computing software users. For six years it operated several different volunteer computing projects that allowed members to donate their spare computer cycles to worthwhile causes. In 2007, it became a community for open source cluster and grid computing software. After around 2010 it redirected to other sites. From its establishment in April 2001 until April 27, 2007, grid.org was the website and organization that ran distributed computing projects such as the United Devices Cancer Research Project, led by Jikku Venkat, Ph.D and was sponsored philanthropically by United Devices (UD) and members participated in volunteer computing by running the UD Agent software (version 3.0). The United Devices Cancer Research Project, which began in 2001, was seeking possible drugs for the treatment of cancer using distributed computing. There were around 150,000 users in the United States and 170,000 in Europe along with hundreds of thousands more in other parts of the world. The project was an alliance of several companies and organisations: United Devices Inc. National Foundation for Cancer Research University of Oxford Department of Chemistry Donors of molecular research United Devices released the cancer research screensaver under the principle of using spare computing power. The program, which could be set to run continually, used "virtual screening" to find possible interactions between molecules and target proteins, i.e. a drug. These molecules (ligands) are sent to the host computer's UD Agent. When these molecules dock successfully with a target protein this interaction is scored for further investigation. The research consisted of two phases: Phase 1 tested over 3 billion drug-like molecules against 12 proteins which were known to be suitable targets for anti-cancer drugs. It used the "THINK" software for the simulation of the molecular interactions.