Spam Filter technology to fight AIDS

Microsoft Research has pioneered promising new ways to combat one of humankind's most deadly viruses with advanced software typically used to analyze large computer databases and complex digital images, or to separate spam from legitimate e-mail.

Today at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Microsoft Research will show how medical researchers can use machine-learning, data-mining and other software techniques to comb through millions of strains of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to find the genetic patterns necessary to train a patient's immune system to fight the virus. The first of these vaccine designs are currently undergoing laboratory testing.