Cloud Pharmaceuticals Granted 1M Hours of Supercomputer Time to Target Orphan Diseases Including Malaria

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC, UNITED STATES - Jul 14, 2014 - Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a therapeutics company focused on cloud-based drug design and development, announced today the expansion of its drug design and development program. The company has been granted supercomputing time at Argonne National Laboratory to design inhibitors of multiple parasitic targets. 

Through a discretionary allocation of 1 million core-hours at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), researchers at Cloud Pharmaceuticals will use Mira, a 10-petaflops IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer to investigate inhibitors of the dihydrofolate reductase enzyme, or DHFR, from multiple sources. The purpose is to identify leading drug candidates for broad-impact, anti-parasitic therapeutics targeting several orphan diseases including malaria. The results will be published to the scientific community and general public. Preclinical development is expected to follow.

"Very often, the same protein will mutate and cause different types of illness or disease. Targeting this protein at a molecular level helps to identify a more effective treatment protocol," says Ed Addison, CEO of Cloud Pharmaceuticals.

Cloud Pharmaceuticals is using a highly parallel, quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) computational chemistry algorithm and bioinformatics tools to increase the accuracy of the algorithms used in drug discovery. Cloud Pharmaceuticals also uses its Inverse Design in silico drug design technology and applies novel artificial intelligence algorithms to search through large portions of molecular space to identify the best drug candidates.

About Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Cloud Pharmaceuticals is a leader in the computational design of new drugs and subsequent rapid, information-driven drug development. We accelerate the drug discovery and design process in a way that delivers tangible results and true value for our partners. For information visit www.cloudpharmaceuticals.com.

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