OpenZika: An IBM World Community Grid Project to Accelerate Zika Virus Drug Discovery

A preprint of an article submitted to a journal - The Zika virus outbreak in the Americas has caused global concern, and to help this fight against Zika we launched the OpenZika project. OpenZika is an IBM World Community Grid Project that uses distributed computing on millions of computers and Android devices to run docking experiments, in order to dock millions of drug-like compounds against crystal structures and homology models of Zika proteins (and other related flavivirus targets). This will enable the identification of new virtual candidates that can then be tested in vitro, to advance the discovery and development of new antiviral drugs against the Zika virus. The docking data will be made openly accessible so that all members of the global research community can use it to further advance drug discovery studies for Zika and other viruses.