Dr Kirill Veselkov and his team are working with Vodafone Foundation to develop DreamLab. The free app harnesses the computing power of smartphones to process the enormous calculations of a cancer genome research project while their owner’s sleep. Dr Veselkov’s team has developed an algorithm that breaks up the necessary work into millions of self-contained 1MB chunks that can be handled by individual phones. As part of their project (called DRUGS – Drug Repositioning Using Grids of Smartphones), they aim to identify novel indications or alternative uses of the existing drugs tailored to genomic makeup of cancer.
Star Wars Actor John Boyega supported the launch of the DreamLab App.
Their second project, Corona-AI study, uses artificial intelligence and the power of idle smartphones to search for molecules with antiviral properties in everyday plant-based foods, as well as identifying licenced drugs that could potentially be ‘repurposed’ against COVID-19.