Microsoft shares source code in fight against AIDs

Microsoft this week announced that it is to share the source code for four tools that may help further research into a vaccine for AIDs.

The software giant has been working on the code for the past two years and has now made it freely available for download on its CodePlex site in the hope that researchers and scientists around the world will take its creation and build on it to drive the fight against the disease forward.

Researchers can either download pre-compiled programs or they can download the source code and compile the applications themselves, modifying them for their own vaccine research requirements.

Despite drug treatments that can control the symptoms of the condition to a certain extent, they are far from cheap and missed doses can exacerbate things. These are the very reasons that led Microsoft to pioneer its efforts, following the realisation that its machine-learning technology could be used for vaccine research.

By combining graphical models and other machine-learning techniques to sift through thousands of strains of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Microsoft's research aims to identify the genetic patterns required to teach someone's immune system to fight the virus.

"We apply technology to some of the world's toughest technical and societal challenges," said David Heckerman, who is dedicated to vaccine research in Microsoft's machine learning and applied statistics group.

"And with 10,000 people per day dying of AIDS, this world health crisis is certainly one of those challenges...Although much work remains to be done, the software tools we've created will help move us down that road and make headway in the fight against AIDS. As just one of several approaches to HIV vaccine design that we pursue at Microsoft Research, we hope our effort to apply a more rigorous statistical approach to this work will expedite scientific insight and bring us a step closer to developing a vaccine."

Today, Microsoft has a dozen researchers, post-doctoral candidates and interns based in its labs dedicated to this research programme, all of whom collaborate with others working in this field around the world.

"The medical research tools developed by Microsoft prove that we can make more progress in the battle against HIV when experts in various fields pool their resources and work together," said one of those collaborators, Dr. James Mullins, a professor in the University of Washington's Department of Microbiology in Seattle.

"Our work with Microsoft Research to combine biological and computer sciences has already been very productive in moving our vaccine design efforts forward. I am quite certain that the tools that have and are being developed at Microsoft have far more exciting potential for closing in on the designs that will most likely bring success."

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