IonQ Speeds Quantum-Accelerated Drug Development Application With AstraZeneca, AWS, and NVIDIA
Largest demonstration of its kind combines leading hardware, platforms, and techniques to achieve 20 times speedup over previous demonstrations
Ecosystem collaboration marks significant step toward designing more efficient ways of producing pharmaceuticals
IonQ will showcase demonstration at ISC High Performance conference in
The results of the collaboration will be showcased at the ISC High Performance conference, which takes place on
The IonQ-designed workflow provides an end-to-end example of a hybrid quantum-classical workflow that helps provide solutions to complex pharmaceutical development challenges, and has the potential to improve speed and efficiency within the drug development process. Developing new drugs can take ten or more years and cost billions of dollars, so advancements that streamline early-stage research and reduce computational bottlenecks can unlock significant strategic and commercial value.
This demonstration focused on a critical step in a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction – a class of chemical transformations used for the synthesis of small molecule drugs. By integrating IonQ’s Forte quantum processing unit (QPU) with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform through Amazon Braket and AWS ParallelCluster services, the team achieved more than 20 times improvement in end-to-end time-to-solution compared to previous implementations. The technique maintained accuracy while reducing the overall expected runtime from months to days.
“This demonstration with AstraZeneca represents a meaningful step toward practical quantum computing applications in chemistry and materials science and showcases how IonQ’s enterprise-grade quantum computers are uniquely suited to meet the challenge,” said
“This collaboration marks an important step towards accurately modeling activation barriers for catalyzed reactions relevant to route optimizing in drug development. We look forward to further advancements in the area,” said
“Future quantum computers are not going to replace traditional compute, but instead accelerate specific, computationally intensive processing steps as part of HPC processing pipelines,” said
“Bringing together state-of-the-art quantum and GPU computing in hybrid workflows is the path to realizing quantum’s potential,” said
IonQ and its partners demonstrated a large-scale, end-to-end simulation of a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, which is the most complex chemical simulation run on IonQ hardware to date. The hybrid quantum-classical workflow – orchestrated via CUDA-Q on Amazon Braket, accelerated with NVIDIA H200 GPUs through AWS ParallelCluster – delivered more than a 20x speedup in time-to-solution compared to prior benchmarks. This advancement highlights the scalability of IonQ’s quantum systems and their practical potential in pharmaceutical R&D.
These results show how hybrid quantum computing can overcome computational limits in high-accuracy molecular modeling and enables the analysis of more complex chemical systems. It builds on recent IonQ demonstrations of practical applications where hybrid quantum-classical approaches outperformed purely classical methods.
For more information on this research, please visit the IonQ booth #A25 at the ISC High Performance conference in
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This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. Statements that are not historical in nature, including the words “accessible,” “aimed,” “available,” “can,” “cutting-edge,” “delivering,” “enables,” “growth,” “innovative,” “impactful,” “latest,” “leader,” “leading,” “making,” “potential,” “provide,” “solving,” “toward,” “will,” and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to the IonQ’s quantum computing capabilities and plans; IonQ’s technology driving commercial quantum advantage or delivering scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future; the relevance and utility of quantum algorithms and applications run on IonQ’s quantum computers; the necessity, effectiveness, and future impacts of IonQ’s offerings available today; and the scalability, fidelity, efficiency, viability, accessibility, effectiveness, importance, reliability, performance, speed, impact, practicality, feasibility, significance, and commercial-readiness of IonQ’s offerings. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections, and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: IonQ’s ability to implement its technical roadmap; changes in the competitive industries in which IonQ operates, including development of competing technologies; IonQ’s ability to deliver, and customers’ ability to generate, value from IonQ’s offerings; and IonQ’s ability to deliver higher speed and fidelity gates with fewer errors, enhance information transfer and network accuracy, or reduce noise and errors. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company’s filings, including but not limited to those described in the “Risk Factors” section of IonQ’s most recent periodic financial report (10-Q or 10-K) filed by IonQ with the
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