April 5, 2002

Distributed-Computing Project Identifies 12,000 Compounds That May Block Anthrax Infection

University of Oxford researchers who used distributed-computing software to identify molecules that could treat anthrax have submitted their results to the U.S. and British governments.

Graham Richards, the head of the research team and chairman of Oxford's chemistry department, said: "What we have produced, out of our 3.5 billion tries, are 300,000 compounds that would bind in the correct site on the [anthrax] protein. About 12,000 look as though they would bind rather well, so that