Sony expects to shut down its Life with PlayStation application by the beginning of November. The application will no longer accept new sign ups when firmware 4.30 is rolled out this Thursday.
The service opened in 2007, and allowed players to involve their console in a project to uncover the intricacies of protein folding. This is aimed at discovering cures for diseases such as cancer and Parkinsons.
15 million users signed up, amounting to around 100 million computation hours. This benefited Alzheimer's research work in particular.
The PS3 system was a game changer for Folding@Home, as it opened the door for new methods and new processors, eventually also leading to the use of GPUs," Vijay Pande, Folding@Home research lead at Stanford University said.
"We have had numerous successes in recent years. Specifically, in a paper just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, we report on tests of predictions from earlier Folding@Home simulations, and how these predictions have led to a new strategy to fight Alzheimer’s disease."
"The next steps, now underway at Stanford, are to take this lead compound and help push it towards a viable drug. It’s too early to report on our preliminary results there, but I’m very excited that the directions set out in this paper do appear to be bearing fruit in terms of a viable drug (not just a drug candidate)."
Well done to everyone who took part.
