The ability of Quantum Computing to simulate larger, more complex molecules could be game-changing and therefore, pharmaceutical companies have to reflect on their strategic stance on this promising new technology.

What is at the center of the pharmaceutical industry is the development of molecular formulations. These become the drugs to treat/cure diseases. Therefore, the development is so crucial that the pharma industry spends fifteen percent of its sales on Research & Development. This is a huge sum which accounts for more than twenty percent of total Research & Development spending across industries in the global economy. This investment also helps in innovation which constantly seeks to enhance the Research & Development process. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies for decades have been the early adopters of computational chemistry’s digital tools. This includes molecular dynamics simulations & density functional theory and more recently, pharma Research & Development has taken advantage of AI, which is the next digital frontier is quantum computing.

Pharma’s focus on molecular formations

The main activity of pharmaceutical companies is to find & develop small molecules as well as macromolecules. Since this may facilitate in curing illnesses & diseases as well. Pharma industry is a natural candidate for Quantum Computing, given its focus on molecular formations. Lastly and most importantly, the molecules such as the ones which may be used for drugs are quantum systems, - these are systems based on quantum physics.

QC is anticipated to not only predict but also simulate the properties, structure& behavior of the molecules more effectively than conventional computing could do, and also exact methods are computationally intractable for standard computers.

 Also, approximate methods are not accurate enough when interactions on the atomic level are critical. However, theoretically, quantum computers are capable of efficiently simulating the complete problem, which includes interactions on the atomic level. Moving ahead as quantum computers evolve into becoming more powerful, the tremendous value will be at stake.

QC primary value for pharma lies in R&D

Although Quantum Computing benefits the complete pharma value chain, its primary value lies in Research & Development. At present, the players in the pharma industry process molecules with non-quantum Computing tools that include MD & DFT in a methodology known as computer-assisted drug discovery (CADD). However, the classical computers they rely on are merely limited, therefore, fundamental calculations predicting the behavior of medium-size drug molecules may consume a lifetime to compute accurately.

Computer-assisted drug discovery on quantum computers may increase the scope of biological mechanisms compliant to CADD. Also, leveraging Quantum Computing in Computer-assisted drug discovery and hypothesis development may improve the early steps in drug discovery, to a greater extent.

Predicting 3D protein structures

The promise of Quantum computing in numerous fields is becoming ever-more tangible and drug discovery is only one of the numerous areas in which Quantum Computing is anticipated to play a major role. On an average, it may consumer over ten years coupled with billions of dollars in order to obtain a potentially life-saving new drug to the market. Quantum computing promises to revolutionize this expensive, as well as the lengthy process of drug discovery and drug development. And, this is going to be achieved by expanding the search for new chemicals with an aim to treat some of the deadly diseases, and speeding up the creation of new drugs by cutting the costs of their development.

At present, the researchers actually rely on computer models as well as simulations for analyzing how atoms and molecules behave, for developing drugs, which will have maximum positive effects and minimum harmful effects. Also, numerous pharma companies tend to develop new drugs even without being aware of the protein structures using trial and error methods and therefore Quantum Computing can play a major role here by predicting 3D protein structures by getting high-quality structural data.

The road ahead

"Quantum computing is going to get big in 5 years. People should learn it, because it will give them advantage when those computers become powerful,” states Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM.

Quantum computing has begun enabling breakthroughs in various industries across the globe with its phenomena of quantum mechanics. According to recent reports, the global quantum computing market is anticipated to reach USD 378.40 million by 2030. Countries such as Japan, & South Korea are showing huge progress in Quantum computing and also most of the governments have initiated the process of allocating millions of dollars in the budget for the investment in Quantum computers in order to discover the undiscoverable. Therefore, quantum computing has also made a huge impact on the pharma industry for drug discovery as well as development.