ProteinQure\u2019s co-founder argues \u201cmessy biology experiments\u201d are still the bottleneck.<\/p>\n
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Quantum chemistry has been touted as having the potential to revolutionize drug discovery. But Mark Fingerhuth, the co-founder and chief research and development officer of Toronto biotech startup ProteinQure<\/a>, says we\u2019re not quite there yet.<\/p>\n The news: Fingerhuth\u2019s comments were made at Creative Destruction Lab<\/a> (CDL)\u2019s Super Session on Wednesday morning during Toronto Tech Week. During a fireside on Xanadu\u2019s journey and quantum computing, Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook said quantum chemistry might be \u201cthe lowest-hanging fruit\u201d given its theoretically lower qubit requirements.\u00a0 Fingerhuth, who spoke on the following panel, shared a more grounded perspective.<\/p>\n From the source: Fingerhuth said quantum chemistry hasn\u2019t yet had its \u201cChatGPT moment\u201d when it comes to drug discovery. \u201cI\u2019m still very optimistic when it comes to quantum, but over the last nine years, I realized how simulating a molecule more accurately \u2026 isn\u2019t really what drug discovery and pharma is bottlenecked by\u2014it\u2019s really by the messy biology experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n The best of Toronto Tech Week <\/p>\n BetaKit is Toronto Tech Week\u2019s official media partner. Read all of our coverage here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Following the thread: Since 2017, ProteinQure has been building the computational infrastructure to develop new drugs with less trial-and-error. The startup\u2019s current focus is on treating breast and brain cancers, problems that Fingerhuth said aren\u2019t really addressed by any quantum speed up or better quantum algorithm. ProteinQure\u2019s work focuses on peptides<\/a>\u2014a wide-ranging class of drugs that have been the focus of intense scientific and public interest recently, thanks to the success of drugs like Ozempic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Final thought: Rather than quantum computing, which ProteinQure has pivoted away from, Fingerhuth said the company has relied on classical algorithms and AI. The co-founder said the latter has enabled ProteinQure\u2019s biggest breakthrough to date: advancing its AI-designed peptide therapeutic to a Phase 1 clinical trial.<\/p>\n Feature image courtesy Josh Scott for BetaKit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ProteinQure\u2019s co-founder argues \u201cmessy biology experiments\u201d are still the bottleneck.
Quantum chemistry has been touted as having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,580,31756,31757,293,717,31754,1266,157,31753,10806,8623,31758,31755],"class_list":["post-54091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-ai","tag-chatgpt","tag-christian-weedbrook","tag-creative-destruction-lab","tag-events","tag-hardware","tag-mark-fingerhuth","tag-ontario","tag-openai","tag-proteinqure","tag-quantum","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-tech-week","tag-xanadu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}