A federal grant will allow Johns Hopkins researchers to
purchase a powerful $2 million
computer that will speed up their efforts to find new ways
to diagnose and treat brain disease, heart
illnesses, cancer and other medical ailments.
The Institute for
Computational Medicine, based at the Homewood campus,
will receive one of
the 20 High-End Instrumentation Grants for 2008 awarded by
the National Center for Research
Resources, a part of the National Institutes of Health. The
one-time grants, announced last week, are
awarded to support the purchase of sophisticated equipment
costing more than $750,000, machines
with the potential to impact a wide range of biomedical
research. The $2 million grant to the Johns
Hopkins institute was the maximum amount allowed for any
single project.
Launched in 2005 as one of the first, largest and most
ambitious research centers of its kind,
the Institute for Computational Medicine focuses on
unraveling health problems through methods
other than traditional "wet-lab" techniques such as growing
cells in a dish. Some of its researchers,
for instance, create elaborate computer models that mimic
in virtual reality the real-world activity of
living cells and organs. Researchers conduct experiments
with these models, testing, for example, the
effects of experimental medications. Other researchers use
information technology to compare
digital images of healthy and diseased tissue, looking for
early indications of illness.
"With this federal grant, we will be able to buy a
computer equipped with the next generation
of microprocessors, hardware that will be available later
this year," said Raimond L. Winslow, director
of the institute. "It will be the most powerful computer at
Johns Hopkins, and very few other places
have a computer this powerful dedicated to solving these
types of biomedical problems. The computer
will allow us to move toward important discoveries in
medical diagnoses and treatment at a much
faster speed."
The new device is expected to be a 256 dual quad-core
node cluster computer with 1 petabyte
of storage. A petabyte is a measure of digital information
equivalent to 1 quadrillion bytes or 1,000
terabytes. (A common household computer or portable flash
drive usually possesses storage capacity
measured in gigabytes; a terabyte equals 1,024 gigabytes of
data.)
The computer will be installed, tentatively in early
2009, in the Computational Science and
Engineering Building. "We have a 1,000-square-foot room
reserved for it, and the computer will fill it
up," Winslow said. A vendor for the computer has not yet
been selected.
The technological resource will be shared by more than
a dozen faculty members affiliated with
the Institute for Computational Medicine. Winslow predicts
that it will also serve perhaps 100 other
collaborators from the university's
School of Medicine and Whiting School of
Engineering and from other institutions.
Three Department of
Biomedical Engineering faculty members who will be
among the institute
members using the computer to enhance their research
are:
Natalia Trayanova, who studies how
dangerous arrhythmias are initiated and maintained in the
heart. The computer is expected to speed up her efforts to
find the best ways to halt these irregular
heart rhythms with shocks from a defibrillator.
Michael I. Miller, who compares
the shape of brain structures in images from healthy and
diseased patients, looking for differences that may lead to
better diagnoses and treatments. Miller
now uses linked computers across the country to collect the
resources to conduct this research. When
Miller gets access to the new Johns Hopkins computer,
Winslow said, work that now takes months to
accomplish by cross-country connections should take only
days to complete.
Rachel Karchin, who is using
computer models to predict how mutations in proteins can
trigger
the development of breast cancer. The new device should
enable her to study this process in more
complex and more detailed models, Winslow said.
The Johns Hopkins computer award was part of the $33.3
million in grants allocated for 2008
by the National Center for Research Resources to fund
purchases of the latest generation of
advanced research equipment.
"Innovative biomedical research requires frequent
access to the newest and most advanced
technology," said center director Barbara Alving.
"High-performance equipment provides NIH-funded
researchers with new discovery tools enabling a new
generation of data and a new dimension of
information. Tools such as these play key roles in the
study of disease and the fundamental
mechanisms of biological function, ultimately leading to
new advances and treatments for diseases."