How will quantum impact the biotechnology industry?

Atomic physics and disease treatment technology may sound like different fields. However, over the past few decades, advances in artificial intelligence, sensing, simulation, etc. have had a profound impact on the biotechnology industry.

Quantum computing offers the opportunity to extend these advances through increased speed and/or accuracy of calculations in each area. Now is the time for companies, commercial organizations, and research institutions to begin exploring how quantum can be used to solve problems in their respective domains.

As a partner in IBM’s Quantum business unit, I have had the pleasure of driving quantum innovation in healthcare alongside Wade Davis, Vice President of Computational Sciences and Head of Digital Research at Moderna. Below you will find some of the perspectives we share on the future of quantum computing in biotechnology.

What is quantum computing?

Quantum computing is a new kind of computer processing technology that relies on the science that governs the behavior of atoms to solve problems that are too complex or impractical for today’s fastest supercomputers. We do not expect quantum to replace classical computing. Rather, quantum computers will serve as highly specialized, complementary computing resources for executing specific tasks.

The way to read this blog is on a classic computer. These computers represent information as strings of 0s and 1s and manipulate these strings using a series of logical operations. The result is a computer that operates deterministically. These actions have well-defined effects and a series of actions produces a single result. But quantum computers are probabilistic. The same sequence of operations can lead to different results, so these computers can explore and calculate multiple scenarios simultaneously. However, this alone cannot explain all the capabilities of quantum computing. Quantum mechanics provides access to a variant and counterintuitive version of probability that can perform calculations inaccessible to classical computers.

Quantum computers can therefore enable us to evaluate new dimensions to existing problems and explore entirely new areas that are currently inaccessible. And they do the calculations in a way that more closely reflects nature itself.

As mentioned earlier, we do not expect quantum computers to replace classical computers. Each has its pros and cons. Quantum is great for executing specific algorithms or simulating nature, but classic still does a lot of the work. We look forward to a future where programs interweave quantum and classical computation together, relying on where each is better suited. Quantum will expand the power of classic.

Unlock new potential

A core set of enterprise applications are taking shape in the rapidly evolving quantum hardware and software environment. What the following problems share is that they have many variables, structures that map well to the rules of quantum mechanics, and that they are difficult to solve with today’s HPC resources. These are broadly categorized into three buckets:

• Advanced math and complex data structures. The multidimensional nature of quantum mechanics provides new ways to approach problems with many moving parts, enabling better analytical performance for computationally complex problems. Despite recent groundbreaking advances in AI and generative AI, quantum computing promises the ability to identify and recognize patterns that are undetectable in traditional learning AI, especially when data is sparse and imbalanced. For biotech, this can help comb through datasets to find trends that can identify and personalize interventions that target disease at the cellular level.
• Search and Optimization. Companies have a strong desire to solve complex combination and black box problems to gain more powerful insights for strategic planning and investments. In the more distant future, quantum systems will open a variety of promising opportunities, including the ability to generate statistical distributions, rapidly identify protein fold structures, and optimize sequence analysis to advance mRNA, focusing on the ability to consider a broad set of computations simultaneously. is being studied. based treatment.
• nature simulation. Quantum computers naturally reproduce the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles, making them useful for simulating how matter interacts with its environment. This opens up new possibilities within the biotechnology industry to design new drugs to fight emerging diseases, and more broadly to enable carbon capture and optimize energy storage to help the industry tackle climate change. It opens up new possibilities for discovering new substances.

At IBM, we recognize that our role is not only to provide the world’s best hardware and software, but also to connect quantum and non-quantum domain experts in these areas to deliver useful quantum computing faster. To this end, we have convened five working groups covering Medical/Life Sciences, Materials Science, High Energy Physics, Optimization and Sustainability. Each of these working groups meets in person to generate ideas and foster collaboration. These collaborations then generate new research and domain-specific implementations of quantum algorithms.

As algorithm discovery and development matures and the focus expands to real-world applications, commercial enterprises are also transitioning from experimental proofs of concept to utility-scale prototypes to be integrated into their workflows. Over the next few years, companies around the world will invest in nurturing talent and preparing their organizations for the advent of quantum computing.

Today, an organization’s quantum computing readiness score is most influenced by its operating model. When organizations invest in the teams and processes to manage quantum innovation, they are better positioned than their peers who focus solely on technology without investing in talent. and innovation process. IBM Institute for Business Value | Research Insight: Making Quantum Readiness a Reality

Among the industries that are turning to useful quantum computing, the biotechnology industry is moving quickly to explore how quantum computing can help reduce costs and accelerate the time needed to discover, create, and deploy treatments that will improve health. there is. Well-being and quality of life of individuals suffering from chronic disease. According to BCG’s Quantum Computing Is Becoming Business Ready report, “Eight of the top 10 biopharmaceutical companies are experimenting with quantum computing, and five have partnered with quantum providers.”

Partnership with IBM

Recent advances in quantum computing have opened new avenues for solving complex combinatorial problems that are intractable on classical computers. Among these challenges, prediction of mRNA secondary structure is an important task in molecular biology, influencing our understanding of gene expression, regulation, and the design of RNA-based therapeutics.

For example, Moderna has pioneered quantum development for biotechnology. Coming out of the pandemic, Moderna has established itself as a game-changing innovator in biotechnology, using its technology platform from a decade of extensive R&D to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine at record speed.

Learn more: How Moderna is using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver mRNA and help fight disease

Given the value of the platform approach, perhaps quantum could further improve our ability to conduct mRNA research, delivering numerous new mRNA vaccines more efficiently than ever before. This is where IBM can help.

As an initial step, Moderna is collaborating with IBM to benchmark quantum computing applications against the existing CPlex protein analysis solver. They are evaluating the performance of a quantum algorithm called CVaR VQE on randomly generated mRNA nucleotide sequences to accurately predict stable mRNA structures compared to the current state of the art. Their findings demonstrate the potential of quantum computing to provide insights into mRNA dynamics and point out a promising direction for advancing computational biology through quantum algorithms. As a next step, they hope to extend quantum to sequence lengths beyond what CPLEX can handle.

This is just one of many collaborations that are transforming biotechnology processes with the help of quantum computing. Biotechnology companies are using IBM Quantum Systems to run workloads on real-world utility-scale quantum hardware while leveraging the IBM Quantum Network to share expertise across domains. And with the updated IBM Quantum Accelerator program, companies can now prepare their organizations with hands-on guidance for identifying use cases, designing workflows, and developing utility-scale prototypes that use quantum computing for business impact.

There has never been a better time to start your quantum journey. Get started now.

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