Folding@home takes up the fight against Coronavirus

Folding@home is a complex project, but the idea behind it is simple. The human race needs to understand protein folding, and the power of our unused computational resources could be used to accelerate these efforts. In time, these data gained from these efforts could be used to develop new drugs and treatments for diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis and more.   

Now, the Folding@home project has taken up the fight against Coronavirus, Covid-19, partnering with a research team at Memorial Sloan Kettering to “advance our understanding of the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV that could aid in the design of new therapies.”

Anyone can install Folding@home on their devices, allowing PCs, Macs, Linux systems and Android devices (4.4 or newer) to donate their spare computational resources to generate useful data for scientists. This could, in turn, accelerate the development of “life-saving therapies” for Coronavirus and other diseases.  

Update – According to moderators on the Folding@home forums, Projects for Coronavirus folding are still being prepared. At this time it is unknown if folders will be able to fold these projects directly. The ETA on Coronavirus related folding is said to be “within a week”, that said, folding for causes such as Cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research are still worthy causes to dedicate your computational resources to.  

Below is an excerpt from a recent blogpost on the Folding@home blog.