Grid technologies empowering drug discovery

Grid technologies enable flexible coupling and sharing of computers, instruments and storage. Grids can provide technical solutions to the volume of data and computational demands associated with drug discovery by delivering larger computing capability (flexible resource sharing), providing coordinated access to large data resources and enabling novel online exploration (coupling computing, data and instruments online). Here, we illustrate this potential by describing two applications: the use of desktop PC grid technologies for virtual screening, and distributed X-ray structure reconstruction and online visualization.