A quantum computer will be built from scratch and tested against real pharmaceutical problems, running calculations ten times faster than today's supercomputers. Drug discovery is brutally inefficient. More than half of the drugs that reach human trials never get approved, wasting years of effort and enormous cost. Even the most powerful classical supercomputers struggle to model the quantum behaviour of molecules accurately enough to predict which substances will work. This project tackles that bottleneck head-on. The team—combining quantum hardware from SeeQC, software from Riverlane, and drug-development expertise from Merck and the University of Oxford—will build a quantum machine and link it to a classical supercomputer at the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The quantum processor handles the hardest molecular calculations; the classical machine manages the rest. If it works, pharmaceutical companies could screen far more candidate drugs, with higher confidence, in a fraction of the time. The impact is practical and industrial. Faster, cheaper drug development means safer medicines can reach patients sooner. It also strengthens the UK’s position in both quantum technology and pharmaceuticals—two sectors where the country already leads.
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The covid 19 pandemic underlined the importance of quick and efficient development of drugs and vaccines, that are safe to deploy for wider use. Despite impressive developments during the pandemic, drug discovery remains a very long and expensive with very low probability of success. Identifying useful substances with suitable properties for specific diseases is very difficult task, even for the most powerful supercomputer. More than half of the few drugs that enter the phase of human trials, do not get approval for commercial use, with all the effort related to that going to waste. Quantum computing is a new type of supercomputer that works differently than current computers. Based on the exotic properties of quantum mechanics, they will be able to solve very complicated problems, that are currently unsolvable in a short amount of time; modelling the properties of drugs is one of these problems. Quantum computers can help scientists select and study more and better substances in order to deliver faster more efficient drugs for the benefit of all. In this project, we will develop a quantum computer and use it alongside a classical supercomputer to solve problems that are of real value to the pharmaceutical companies. SeeQC and Riverlane, two of the most successful UK-based companies developing quantum hardware and software respectively will join forces to develop a useful quantum machine. SeeQC will work with the Oxford Instruments to improve the quantum hardware, while Riverlane will develop the software to operate the quantum machine and the quantum algorithms to be used for the calculations. With the help of Merck, a global pharmaceutical company, the University of Oxford and the Medicines Discovery Catapult we will identify some of the pain points of the drug discovery process where quantum computers can help. We will solve them by interleaving our quantum machine with a very powerful supercomputer, that belongs to the Science and Technology funding Council. In this way, the most demanding part of the calculations will be solved on the quantum machine. This trick will deliver more accurate results ten times faster than standard computers. The UK is a world leader in the pharmaceutical sector and a pioneer in developing the quantum technology industry. This project is of real national value as it will boost the development of quantum computers, while showing how useful they can be in solving major problems of a very important industry.
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