NEWS BRIEFS

Fairfax, VA. — Parabon Computation, Inc., a pioneer in Internet computing, will deliver computing resources to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These computing resources will help researchers understand how certain drugs affect cancer cells.

Parabon’s Frontier computing platform will be used by the Genomic & Bioinformatics Group (GBG) of NCI’s Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology for research that could help answer complex questions that arise during the analysis of cancer-related data. These computational studies will assist in the analysis of new anti-cancer drugs. Parabon’s computational resources may enable the NCI research team to accelerate cancer research by solving complex computational problems in a matter of days rather than the many months currently required. This partnership may also lead to new ways for researchers to answer questions that extend beyond the bounds of traditional supercomputing.

“Cancer research is just one example of scientific and business research that has always been limited by traditional computing resources. Now with Parabon’s Internet computing solution, these limitations are gone,” said Steven L. Armentrout, Ph.D., president and CEO of Parabon. “We are very excited about Parabon’s support of the NCI project-it allows individuals to directly contribute to cancer research and may lead to important discoveries.”

Parabon is providing supercomputation resources to NCI in a brand new way: by harnessing the idle power of computers across the Internet. Parabon’s Frontier platform provides flexible and variable power and delivers it on demand to researchers and businesses worldwide. Complex calculations can be greatly accelerated, significantly reducing research and development time across a variety of industries.

Within the Frontier platform, large computational problems are broken up into smaller tasks and distributed via the Internet to individual computers on which the Pioneer compute engine software has been installed. Pioneer processes a task only when the software senses that the computer is idle. Once a task is completed, the result is sent back via the Internet to Parabon’s server. Parabon’s system is thoroughly protected with multiple layers of security, protecting an individual’s computer and access by third parties.

As part of its Compute Against Cancer(SM) program, Parabon is donating computing resources to assist additional cancer research projects. By providing less costly and more efficient supercomputing service, Parabon’s technology enables researchers to conquer complex problems they would otherwise not be able to solve. Parabon is dedicating substantial computational resources to ongoing research and treatment projects in support of cancer patients and their families. Additional projects and partnerships will be announced throughout the year.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) leads research efforts to conquer cancer in all its forms. NCI is one of 25 institutes in the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NCI conducts, coordinates, and funds cancer research, and provides vision and leadership for the cancer research community. NCI conducts and supports programs to understand the causes of cancer; prevent, detect, diagnose, treat, and control cancer; and disseminate information to the practitioner, patient, and public. More information can be found at http://www.nci.nih.gov .

Parabon delivers virtually unlimited computing capacity by harnessing the power of millions of individual computers via the Internet. This flexible, cost-effective resource will make it possible for businesses to accelerate time to market, researchers to discover new cures and scientists to advance discovery. For more information, visit http://www.parabon.com .

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