IonQ Teams Up with AstraZeneca, AWS, and NVIDIA to Speed Up Drug Development with Quantum Computing

IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a quantum computing company, has announced new research results demonstrating how its quantum technology, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, AWS, and NVIDIA, can dramatically accelerate drug discovery and other key processes in healthcare and beyond.

The breakthrough was showcased at the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany, revealing a 20-fold improvement in computation speed compared to previous methods. The hybrid quantum-classical workflow developed by IonQ offers a real-world example of how combining quantum and classical computing can remove bottlenecks in pharmaceutical research and open up new possibilities for healthcare innovation.

Specifically, the demonstration focused on optimizing a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, a vital step in creating small molecule drugs. By integrating IonQ's Forte quantum processing unit (QPU) with NVIDIA's CUDA-Q platform, using Amazon Braket and AWS ParallelCluster, the team achieved significant speed and accuracy gains. What once took months now can be done in days, with no sacrifice in precision.

Niccolo de Masi, CEO of IonQ, said the work with AstraZeneca is a major milestone toward using quantum computing for real-world applications in chemistry and materials science.

AstraZeneca's Anders Broo highlighted the promise of accurately modeling chemical reactions crucial to pharmaceutical development, while AWS's Eric Kessler and NVIDIA's Tim Costa emphasized the power of combining quantum and GPU resources to solve complex problems more effectively.

The demonstration represents IonQ's largest and most complex chemical simulation to date, proving how quantum acceleration can bring practical benefits to the pharmaceutical industry.

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