Discovering a new drug has traditionally taken decades long and cost multiple millions of dollars. The reason is that when companies may have a potentially drug library of about 1030 candidate molecules and will want to test which one of these is most effective with a specific protein binding pocket and ligand. Previously this was accomplished by empirical testing candidates in the lab or computer aided drug discovery (CADD) using conventional computers. The lab testing is very costly and time consuming while the CADD approach is also very time consuming. POLARISqb is now providing a quantum based approach which uses a quantum annealer to accelerate the simulation of the roughly 1030 candidate molecules and reduce the number of candidate compounds to something on the order of 1,000 – 10,000 compounds that would show an optimized set based upon binding pocket fit, bioavailability, synthesizability, and other descriptors. The QuADD process typically will take 1-3 days of time. This reduction in the number of candidates make it much easier to move on to the next step, which is testing in the lab. QuADD is now available to users on a subscription-based SaaS platform. A press release from POLARISqb announcing the release of QuADD is available here.
June 3, 2023
