Microsoft's researchers want to 'solve' cancer within 10 years
Microsoft: a technology company best known for Windows, Office, ...and curing cancer? While that last one may be very surprising, the company’s claims to fame may indeed feature some medical miracles in the near future. In fact, Microsoft says it might ‘solve’ cancer in the next 10 years.
Microsoft is well known for its popular operating system and almost indispensable Office suite, but the company’s research arm often deals with much more interesting and long-term projects, that combine the company’s technical prowess with other fields of science. The company’s Biological Computing lab is just one such project, which marries big data, cloud processing, computer modeling and biology in an effort to better understand our own living cells.
The team is working on a number of different projects, all aimed at understanding how our bodies work. Most of their work is focused on modelling how living cells grow, spread, multiply and “decide” to become cancer or to die. In parallel, but complimentary to this research, scientists are trying to develop molecular computers, built out of DNA, that could detect, interact and perhaps correct or destroy cancerous cells.
