QXFORD, Feb 4: The owners of hundreds of thousands of home computers are being asked to use the idle capacity of their PCs to help develop an effective treatment for the deadly anthrax toxin.

The project is supported by Intel, Microsoft, United Devices, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR).

Individuals with access to the Internet are asked to download a screensaver which allows the owner to donate the PCs spare capacity towards the anthrax project rather than allow it to go to waste. All the user has to do is leave the computer switched on.

Organizers say the project was set up following the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks when the United States was gripped by fear of terrorist attacks using anthrax spores.

The cancer screen saver project launched by Oxford University and the US National Foundation for Cancer Research last year was a huge success, harnessing idle computer time on more than a million personal computers across the world. The capacity was used to screen a database of 3.5 billion drug-like molecules as potential anti- cancer drug candidates.

“Massively distributed computing provides efficient and speedy ways to identify new drug candidates. Particularly with anthrax and other related bioterrorist threats, speed of discovery is of the essence,” said Professor Graham Richards, of Oxford University.—dpa