New case study: designing better antibiotics
Our new case study - Designing better antibiotics - was published today.
The story follows the work of Anna Neumann, a PhD student at the University of Technology in Gdansk, Poland. Anna accessed grid computing resources from the Polish National Grid Initiative to model the way amphotericin B, an antibiotic used to treat fungal infections, attaches with cell membranes.
Diseases caused by fungi are a real risk for people burdened with weak immune systems, for example after organ transplants or long chemotherapy treatments. The fungi can do all kinds of damage, from causing pneumonia in the lungs to attacking the brain with vicious types of meningitis, or triggering life-threatening infections. The antibiotic Amphotericin B – abbreviated as AmB – has been the drug of choice to fight fungal infections for the past 50 years. It’s brutally efficient, killing a broad spectrum of fungal agents and active against all known multidrug resistant strains. (continue reading...)
27 June 2012
Sara Coelho