Virtual screening using grid computing: the screensaver project

Discovering small molecules that interact with protein targets identified by structural genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics will be a key part of future drug discovery efforts. Computational screening of drug-like molecules is likely to be valuable in this respect; however, the vast number of such molecules makes the potential size of this task enormous. Here, I describe how massively distributed computing using screensavers has allowed databases of billions of compounds to be screened against protein targets in a matter of days.