Billionaire computer scientist David E. Shaw is leading a project to develop a powerful new supercomputer that could undertake work on protein folding and other advanced biomedical simulation projects. Dubbed Anton, the supercomputer is equipped with 512 specialized processors that all work simultaneously. And as the New York Times notes in its article, that computing power could be put to work folding proteins into 3-D structures, examining the interplay of proteins or the way proteins and new drugs interact.

This kind of computer simulation could play a key role in identifying new therapeutics with a very high likelihood of success--one of the Holy Grails in biomedical research, where so many projects end up in failure.

- read the article [1] in the New York Times

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