system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why has public distributed computing for medical research been greatly reduced?

5+ Years ago there were a bunch of research projects that let the general population 'fold' protein units to help find possibly links to preventing cancer but now those projects have gone. What happened?
gpt
Usually, lack of interest over time.

These kind of projects don't have many funds (even not at all) to promote themselves. People who join don't compensate for the people who left. 

However most of these projects are still active due to a dedicated community with a lot of computing power - and a good part of them are actually colleges, universities and research labs all around the globe. 

Also, coin mining took a fraction of the people who leave their computer on for calculations.