In the past few years there has been a wild search to try and find a brand new drug that will cure and prevent the bird flu and finally the big pharmaceutical companies are linked together in a way that allows them to consistently communicate with each other. These types of computing grids are the speediest and most efficient ways to discover new leads to drug molecules that might help protect against the bird flu.

According to a press realize in the online version of Science Daily there has been collaboration of European and Asian researchers to try and come up with a drug together against the deadly bird flu virus. A new grid computing program has been invented to harness the combined power of more than forty thousand computers ohms research labs across forty five countries to hasten the pace of anti-viral drug discovery.

Called Enabling Grids for E-science, the computing grid strings thousands of ordinary PCs together to form a super-sized supercomputer that is being used during this challenge to analyse the potential of more than 500,000 drug-like molecules. This mass effort is necessary to step up the development of a prescription or even an over counter drug to manage the effects of bird flu in individuals.

This new invention is hot on the heels of new data released last week b they Peking University in Beijing, China. It shows that the H5N1 bird flu virus can pass easily through the placenta of pregnant women to the fetus, and can infect organs other than the lungs in adults. A rapid response to any pandemic outbreak of the virus would be essential to keep a tragedy of unprecedented proportion in check.

New molecules can inhibit the activities of the influenza virus and this computer system helps doctors from across the world find them. Since the grid forts went into effect it is estimated that over 200 molecules have been found that might have the potential to cure the bird flu