Oxford University last week announced a major initiative to tackle two of the world's biggest medical problems using grid technologies.

The Integrative Biology Project is the university's latest research in the fledgling field of e-science.

It will focus on heart disease and cancer, which together are responsible for six out of 10 deaths in the UK.

Researchers on the project will create a grid of computing resources that will enable them to model complex biological systems, using advanced computer simulations to help understand and treat disease.

By linking computer power from across the UK and abroad, Oxford hopes to further research into these diseases, and also to prove that new technologies can enable scientists to tackle problems that would have defeated them in the past.

'The web has given us shared access to information on the internet. The new technology for e-science, a system called the grid, will provide shared and secure access to distributed computing resources,' said Professor Paul Jeffreys, director of Oxford's e-Science centre.

e-Science uses the web and grid computing to provide access to powerful processing facilities used by scientists around the world.

'It is the future of scientific research. It will take collaborative science to another level in the same way that the internet has transformed information exchange,' said Jeffreys.

'The driving force behind e-science is the need to handle massive amounts of data, and to tackle the complex computational problems presented by scientific research,' he said.

Modern scientists measure data in petabytes - 1,000 terabytes - and their problems would take years to solve on an ordinary computer, says Jeffreys.

'Using grid technologies, scientists around the world will be able to work together, linking their resources to solve problems faster, and to extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge,' he said.

Dr David Gavaghan, Oxford's Integrative Biology project leader, says progress in biological research in the post-human genome era will depend on the ability to develop a coherent underpinning theory of biology.

'This will allow us to make full use of the vast wealth of experimental data now available,' he said.

'Our aim in this project is to build the e-science infrastructure required to support the development of the theory, and its application, while investigating heart disease and cancer.'

The project will focus on two particular biological goals: simulating a heart, and simulating the way that cancers form and grow, with the ultimate aim of creating more effective drugs in the future.

From an academic viewpoint, the project will link researchers from numerous academic disciplines, including experimental mathematical modelling, high performance computing, and simulation.

But to make the real breakthroughs, access to massive computing power is the key.

'Mathematically, it's a huge problem. Not surprisingly the only way that you can do that is to use high performance computing. The key aim is to make this possible via the grid, in a manner that is as easy to use as possible,' said Gavaghan.

To achieve this, the grid infrastructure that was developed for first-generation projects, such as e-Diamond (see box), has to be substantially improved.

Accordingly, a key focus of this project will be to develop and advance the necessary technologies required, ranging from appropriate levels of security to ensuring ease of access and linking to other grids around the globe.

'The focus of the first round projects in the UK was on data aggregation, storage and synthesis. In the second round, we're going to try using that data to provide the biologists with usable information,' said Gavaghan.

A robust and fault-tolerant grid infrastructure for biomedical science will allow researchers to work seamlessly with distributed resources such as high-performance computers, databases and visualisation tools to develop complex models of how diseases develop.

With such tools at their disposal, researchers will be able to model some of the most complex biological systems in the clinical and life sciences, such as 'growing' virtual tumours through the crucial stages of early development.

'Through the new e-science centre at Oxford, we're trying to allow science to be done that wouldn't otherwise be able to be done if we didn't provide the grid infrastructure,' said Gavaghan.

'e-Science really does has to prove itself in this second round of the project, because we've put the investment into it, so if we don't prove that we can facilitate new science, then we won't convince anyone to continue in this direction.'

It's a wide-ranging initiative, spanning Oxford's academic departments, and drawing on researchers from six other universities - University College London (UCL), Nottingham, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Auckland, New Zealand - as well as expertise from IBM.

'We pride ourselves at Oxford University on being at the forefront of research and of UK business/university collaboration,' said Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Sue Iversen.

Although the grid has the potential to make dramatic breakthroughs for biological research, scientists believe the work being done will have wider applications in other areas of science, and even for academia as a whole.

'I believe the grid is for all scholarship, not just for science,' said e-Diamond project leader Professor Mike Brady.

e-Diamond: grid technology in action

The e-Diamond project - or the digital mammogram national database - is the highest profile application of grid technology in the UK, with a goal of improving the success of breast cancer screening.

The vision for the project is to revamp the non-digital and low-technology environment that clinicians currently work in, to seek solutions that will increase the efficiency of the service and improve the tools available to staff.

The problem centres around the difficulties that radiologists face when trying to identify signs of cancer on a mammogram.

'The signs are typically subtle and are very difficult to detect. They differ from patient to patient, and differ over time. The control of image acquisition is poor, and the training is extraordinarily poor,' said Professor Mike Brady, who has led the e-Diamond project since its inception.

Launched in late 2002, the project focuses on improving access to data through digitisation, enabling faster and more reliable retrieval of information.

But the challenge of digitising mammogram images and automating their analysis is far from insignificant: about three million UK women go for breast screening every year, with each individual visit to the radiologist generating around 128Mb of data.

'The problem is computationally rich and demands staggering amounts of compute power. The other thing is that it generates an enormous amount of data,' said Brady.

The solution lies in the creation of a national grid that will facilitate the storage and analysis of digital mammogram images, with automated computer analysis assisting radiographers in their work.

'What we aim to do is construct a federated database of mammograms. Federated because we want to construct the illusion of a single unified database across the entire country, supporting the UK breast screening programme.'

The project brings together IBM, the Oxford e-Science Centre, Oxford-spin off Mirada Solutions, UCL and Kings College London, as well as the breast screening centres.

During 2004, initial rollout of prototype screening workstations is expected to begin across UK screening centres.