Help Conquer Cancer is a distributed computing

Distributed computing

Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...

 project that runs on the BOINC platform. It is a joint project of the Ontario Cancer Institute

Ontario Cancer Institute

The Ontario Cancer Institute is the research division of Princess Margaret Hospital, part of the University Health Network of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. As Canada's first dedicated cancer hospital, it opened officially and began to receive patients in 1958, although its...

 and the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute

Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute

The Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute is an independent, not-for-profit, biomedical research facility located in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus....

Project Purpose

Its goal is to enhance the efficiency of protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and causes the beam of light to spread into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a...

, which will enable researchers to determine the structure of many cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

-related proteins faster. This will lead to improving the understanding of the function of these proteins, and accelerate the development of new pharmaceutical drugs.