20 years ago this week, it was announced University of Louisville Brown Cancer Center life-saving research began 172 miles away in the least likely of places – sent across the wire from Kentucky’s largest city to the school district in a rural agrarian Western Kentucky community known for country hams and its annual tobacco festival.
Student computers deployed virtual models of cancer cells and molecular compounds to potentially destroy them, quietly beginning the long process of drug discovery in the background, even when students and teachers used the same computers for daily schoolwork.
Over the years, the research changed. It GREW. Thousands of molecules became hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions. Different cancer cells being examined deeper and more thoroughly. Seventy computers borrowed to support proof of concept became multiple waves of computers, over 30,000 to date, earned by schools from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Appalachian Mountains. Computers bringing answers to cancer at a fraction of the time and cost while supporting advanced instructional needs growing Kentucky’s next generation of researchers, scientists, and engineers.
One researcher supporting three researchers, then 38 research teams. Eight cancer targets and the ability to work on only one target at a time became 45 patents. Identifying and turning off a key protein present in 80% of all cancers. Two cancer drugs entering human clinical trials, saving lives absent toxic side effects most chemotherapies bring.
We are proud of Dataseam’s hometown(s) and all the hometowns statewide making the drive with us. Whether you are a researcher, scholar, student, teacher, technician, or patient, this 20-year mile marker is yours, too.
They said it couldn’t be done. Never count Kentuckians (or Caldwell Countians) out.
First Dataseam Articles, Caldwell County Times-Leader (Princeton, KY)
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