Drug discovery quantum computing project receives £6.85m grant

A consortium of quantum computing companies including Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) has secured a £6.85 million grant for a project that is looking to improve drug discovery in cancer.

Excerpt from the Press Release:

The consortium is being led by SEEQC and will look to accelerate the use of quantum computing within pharmaceutical research to reduce the time required for drug development on a global scale. 

The grant was awarded via Innovate UK’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Specifically, the project aims to develop simulation tools that support photodynamic therapies for cancer treatment. Today, useful simulations of photosensitising drugs are not possible with classical computing power alone. SEEQC’s project will develop an application-specific quantum computer designed to simulate the most classically challenging tasks within this research.

Quantum computing is a fundamentally different computing approach based on the laws of quantum mechanics, which allows certain computations to be performed far more quickly and efficiently than traditional computing does.

At present it is not possible to develop simulations for photosensitising drugs with traditional computing methods, however, a quantum computer can use the power of quantum mechanics to overcome this issue and make a leap forward for cancer treatment.

While classical machine-learning technologies are already starting to show great promise in reducing both time and cost of getting drugs to patients, quantum processing has the potential to disrupt pre-clinical drug discovery by supercharging the R&D process and making more accurate predictions as to the efficacy of therapeutics.

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