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Insilico researchers have presented an image of how combining methods from AI, quantum computing, and the physics of complex systems can help advance new understandings of human health.

In a new paper, the team have also detailed the latest breakthroughs in physics-guided AI.

The research is published in WIREs Computational Molecular Science.

Although AI has been helpful in processing large, complex biological datasets in order to find new disease pathways and connect ageing and disease at the cellular level, it still faces challenges in applying those insights to complex interactions within the body.

To understand the inner workings of living organisms, scientists need multimodal modelling methods. These models need to manage three key areas of complexity: the complexity of scale, the complexity of the algorithms, and the increasing complexity of datasets.

While we are not a quantum company, it is important to utilise capabilities to take advantage of the speed provided by the new hybrid computing solutions and hyperscalers, said co-author Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine.

As this computing goes mainstream, it may be possible to perform very complex biological simulations and discover personalised interventions with desired properties for a broad range of diseases and age-associated processes.

We are very happy to see our research centre in the UAE producing valuable insights in this area.

Biological processes within living systems range from cells to organs to the whole body, with lots of interactions between systems. These processes need to be interpreted on multiple scales simultaneously, and access to biological data has reached unimaginable levels.

The 1000 Genomes Project, for example, is a catalogue of human genetic variation which has identified over nine million single nucleotide variants. As well as this, the UK Biobank contains full sequences from 500,000 genomes of British volunteers.

Massive computing power is needed to analyse and process it.

Quantum computing is positioned to augment AI approaches, allowing researchers to interpret across multiple levels of the biological system simultaneously.

Qubits hold values of 0 and 1 simultaneously, having greater computing speed and capability compared to classical bits.

The team note the major advances in quantum computing that are already underway, such as IBMs debut of both a utility-scale quantum processor and the companys first modular quantum computer.

The team believe that a physics-guided AI approach will help to increase understanding of human biology. This is a new field that combines physics-based and neural network models.

By combining quantum computing with complex systems, the collective interactions of small-scale elements can be observed at larger levels of reality.

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Insilico Medicine reveal how quantum computing can unlock understanding of ageing and disease - Innovation News Network

Quantum computing investment from VC firms declined by 50% last year, a new study has found. According to the State of Quantum 2024 report by IQM Quantum Computers, OpenOcean and Lakestar, global VC investment dropped from $2.2bn in 2022 to $1.2bn, with most of the decline coming from US funds. This fall was dwarfed, however, by government spending commitments on quantum computing amounting to $40bn over the next decade.

While venture funding temporarily cooled, our research confirms the steady momentum towards the quantum era, said OpenOceans general partner, Ekaterina Almasque. The findings signal that 2024 can become a year of growing confidence in quantum computings potential, despite still a relative lack of private capital flowing into that space. Significant use cases [are] emerging to unlock its commercial promise.

Quantum computing investment in the US tanked by approximately 80% and 17% in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the report, with small gains of 3% in the EMEA region. Waning VC interest in quantum computing could be explained by several factors, it said, beginning with inflated expectations in the technology dating back to 2022. Interviewees for the report agreed that tempered expectations were called for among investors interested in exploring quantum computing in greater depth, along with an understanding that the practical implications of quantum computing could still be years away.

Generative AI also dragged attention and funding away from quantum startups, with VC firms taking the general position that short- and medium-term returns were more likely in the former sector over the latter. Data cited in the report by investment platform Sampo also suggests quantum computing is failing to attract interest from those funds that traditionally invest in hardware startups.While there is no significant difference in average fund size between hardware and quantum computing investors, wrote Almasque in her forward for the report, there are more than [five] times as many investors in hardware than in quantum. This suggests that the quantum ecosystem, across all layers of the stack, is lacking a diverse pool of potential investors.

Despite this, however, there are signs that the broad-based decline in quantum computing investment among VC firms might be in line with declining investment in deep tech generally, with the latter also declining by 50% year on year. Several developments late in 2023 also suggested a recovery in interest among VC firms in quantum. This included a Series B fundraising round for Oxford Quantum Circuits that raised some $100m. As such, investors and vendors quoted in the report were reluctant to label the decline in quantum computing investment from VC firms as a sign that a new quantum winter has taken hold.

It is a great catchphrase, said Citi Global Insights quantum technologies lead, Tahmid Quddus Islam. Even so, investment is down across the board, so you could say we are in more of a deep tech winter.

Declining quantum computing investment levels from the private sector were also completely dwarfed by spending commitments on quantum initiatives from national governments. According to the report, some $40-$50bn has been allocated by the UK, the US, the EU and 30 other governments. 20 of these, it said, have formulated a formal coordinated policy approach to the promising technology.

The mismatch in interest between the private and public sectors in quantum computing in 2023 should not be considered surprising, argues Michael Orme, a senior analyst at GlobalData. Last year it was clear, Orme told Tech Monitor, that the private market for quantum computing startups was overcapitalized and oversupplied as far as VC firms were concerned, with few short-term prospects for commercializing the technology on the horizon. Governments, meanwhile, have different priorities.

The arrival of fully fledged fault-tolerant quantum computing willbe crucial to national security from data protection to sci-fi weaponry, and to achieving leadership in strategic science-based industries or at least staying in contention, says Orme. As such, he adds, if youre the US, China, Russia, Israel or even the UK, you must create a quantum ecosystem and stay in the vanguard.

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VC quantum computing investment crashed in 2023 - Tech Monitor

Scientists have built a qubit, or quantum bit, that can achieve "quantum coherence" at room temperature something normally only possible at temperatures close to absolute zero.

To achieve quantum coherence a stable state in which the weird laws of quantum mechanics can be observed qubits must normally be cooled down to minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273 degrees Celsius) or they succumb to disturbances and fail, which is known as decoherence.

To get around this, the new qubit used a pentacene-based chromophore a dye molecule that absorbs light and emits color embedded into a new metal-organic framework (MOF). Its properties meant scientists could observe quantum coherence briefly at room temperature, the scientists said in a new paper published Jan. 3 in the journal Science Advances.

While classical computers encode data in bits expressed as either 1 or 0 quantum computers use qubits, which can be expressed as a superposition of 1 and 0, meaning it can be both states at the same time until physically observed.

Related: World's 1st graphene semiconductor could power future quantum computers

Most physical qubits create a superposition between an electron's spin-up and spin-down positions two binary states that behave as 1 and 0. They are normally a line of metal, or a tiny loop, that behaves as an atom. Google uses aluminum in its qubits, while IBM uses a mix of aluminum and niobium, according to Scientific American.

Multiple qubits that encode information via electron spin can also be joined by quantum entanglement when the states of two or more particles are linked meaning the entangled qubits can exist in many states simultaneously. This is what makes quantum computers potentially so much more powerful than classical computers if built with enough qubits.

Electrons in chromophores can be excited via a process called singlet fission, in which they absorb light and change their spin states. In the past, researchers used singlet fission to create superposition in qubits, but they only achieved this below minus 324 F (minus 198 C), the scientists wrote in the paper.

For the new study, the scientists used a chromophore based on pentacene hydrocarbon, in which pentagonal rings of carbon and hydrogen are linked together. To achieve this same quantum state at higher temperatures, the researchers trapped the chromophore molecules in the MOF a unique crystalline material composed of metal ions and bound by organic molecules.

The MOF almost completely restricted the dye molecule's movement, helping keep any excited electrons in an entangled state. The scientists then excited the electrons in the chromophore via singlet fission by exposing them to microwave pulses. Tiny holes in the crystalline structure, known as nanopores, enabled the electrons to rotate at a tiny and specific angle, the study's lead author Nobuhiro Yanai, an associate professor of chemistry at Kyushu University, said in a statement.

This slight rotation enabled excited electrons to transition from two pairs of electrons in excited "triplet states" in which electrons from different molecular orbits have parallel spins into one set of four electrons in the less stable "quintet state," in which the electron spins are antiparallel meaning they are parallel but are moving in opposite directions. In this quintet state, the laws of quantum mechanics dominate.

Following this process, the researchers observed quantum coherence in these four electrons in a quintet state for over 100 nanoseconds at room temperature (one nanosecond is a billionth of a second).

It's the first room-temperature quantum coherence of entangled quintet-state electrons, said study co-author Yasuhiro Kobori, a professor of chemistry at Kobe University, in the statement.

In follow-up work, the team hopes to create more stable qubits by adding other "guest" molecules that further restrict the electron motion, or by playing around with the underlying structure of the MOF, Yanai said in the statement.

While the new research is unlikely to lead to room-temperature quantum computing in the foreseeable future, the breakthrough adds to the body of work that's gone into building qubits that can achieve quantum coherence at room temperature. Indeed, producing stable qubits at room temperature has been a hope for a long time, Vlatko Vedral, a professor of quantum information science at the University of Oxford, told Live Science.

Such room-temperature computing would avoid the need for error correction, he said. This is because to work at room temperature, the qubits would by design need to withstand the disruptive forces that render them unstable and prone to decoherence.

"In this paper, long spin coherence times are indeed reported which is a significant advancement," he said. "However, I am not sure how easy it is to scale this up, and in particular how easy it is to control the interactions between qubits. It seems to me this will be the bottleneck since isolated qubits with long coherence times are not of much use for quantum computation." In other words, to make a powerful computer, you need many qubits to perform calculations.

Despite casting doubt on the utility of this specific discovery, Vedral hailed it as "an important milestone," adding this body of research is more promising in the long run than developing ways to perform quantum error correction.

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How could this new type of room-temperature qubit usher in the next phase of quantum computing? - Livescience.com

A unique type of tiny antibody produced by llamas could provide a new frontline treatment against COVID-19 that can be taken by patients as a simple nasal spray.

Research led by scientists at the Rosalind Franklin Institute has shown that nanobodies a smaller, simple form of antibody generated by llamas and camels can effectively target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

They found that short chains of the molecules, which can be produced in large quantities in the laboratory, significantly reduced signs of the COVID-19 disease when administered to infected animal models.

The nanobodies, which bind tightly to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, neutralizing it in cell culture, could provide a cheaper and easier to use alternative to human antibodies taken from patients who have recovered from COVID-19. Human antibodies have been a key treatment for serious cases during the pandemic, but typically need to be administered by infusion through a needle in the hospital.

Public Health England has described the research as having significant potential for both the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, adding that the nanobodies are among the most effective SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing agents we have ever tested.

Nanobodies have a number of advantages over human antibodies, said Professor Ray Owens, head of protein production at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and lead author of the research. They are cheaper to produce and can be delivered directly to the airways through a nebulizer or nasal spray, so can be self-administered at home rather than needing an injection. This could have benefits in terms of ease of use by patients but it also gets the treatment directly to the site of infection in the respiratory tract.

The research team, whose findings are published in the journalNature Communication, were able to generate the nanobodies by injecting a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into a llama called Fifi, who is part of the antibody production facility at the University of Reading.

The spike protein is found on the outside of the virus and is responsible for binding to human cells so it can infect them.

Although the injections did not make Fifi sick, it triggered her immune system to fight off the virus protein by generating nanobodies against it. A small blood sample was then taken from the llama and the researchers were able to purify four nanobodies capable of binding to the COVID-19 virus.

The nanobodies were then combined together into chains of three to increase their ability to bind to the virus. These were then produced in cells in the laboratory.

The team found three nanobody chains were able to neutralise both the original variants of the COVID-19 virus and the Alpha variant that was first identified in Kent, UK. A fourth nanobody chain was able to neutralise the Beta variant first identified in South Africa.

When one of the nanobody chains also known as a trimer were administered to hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2, the animals showed a marked reduction in disease, losing far less weight after seven days than those who remained untreated. Hamsters that received the nanobody treatment also had a lower viral load in their lungs and airways after seven days than untreated animals.

Because we can see every atom of the nanobody bound to the spike, we understand what makes these agents so special, said Professor James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, who helped lead the research.

The results are the first step towards developing a new type of treatment against COVID-19, which could prove invaluable as the pandemic continues.

While vaccines have proven extraordinarily successful, not everyone responds to vaccination and immunity can wane in individuals at different times, said Professor Naismith. Having medications that can treat the virus is still going to be very important, particularly as not all of the world is being vaccinated at the same speed and there remains a risk of new variants capable of bypassing vaccine immunity emerging.

If successful and approved, nanobodies could provide an important treatment around the world as they are easier to produce than human antibodies and dont need to be stored in cold storage facilities, added Professor Naismith.

The research team, which included scientists at the University of Liverpool, University of Oxford and Public Health England, now hope to obtain funding so they can conduct further research needed to prepare for clinical studies in humans.

Prof Miles Carroll, Deputy Director of the National Infection Service, Public Health England (PHE), said: Although this research is still at an early stage, it opens up significant possibilities for the use of effective nanobody treatments for COVID-19.

These are among the most effective SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing agents we have ever tested at PHE. We believe the unique structure and strength of the nanobodies contribute to their significant potential for both the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and look forward to working collaboratively to progress this work into clinical studies.

Dr. Andrew Bourne, Director of Partnerships at EPSRC, said:

Utilising the unique properties of llamas nanobodies, this research could lead to an important new form of treatment for Covid-19 that is cheaper to produce and easier to administer.

It is a vivid illustration of the impact that long-term discovery research at the cutting edge of physical and life sciences, as undertaken at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, can have.

Professor James Stewart, co-author and professor of molecular virology at the University of Liverpool said: The pre-clinical trials of the nanobodies in hamsters are extremely encouraging and suggest that they may be effective at treating COVID-19 disease as well as help prevent infection. Having therapies such as this will be important for populations that are either unvaccinated or where vaccination is inappropriate or ineffective.

The researchers, who were funded by the UK Research and Innovations Medical Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, The EPA Cephalosporin Fund and Wellcome, also hope the nanobody technology they have developed could form a so-called platform technology that can be rapidly adapted to fight other diseases.

When a new virus emerges in the future, the generic technology we have developed could respond to that, which would be important in terms of producing new treatments as quickly as possible, said Professor Owens.

Reference: A potent SARS-CoV-2 neutralising nanobody shows therapeutic efficacy in the Syrian golden hamster model of COVID-19 by Jiandong Huo, Halina Mikolajek, Audrey Le Bas, Jordan J. Clark, Parul Sharma, Anja Kipar, Joshua Dormon, Chelsea Norman, Miriam Weckener, Daniel K. Clare, Peter J. Harrison, Julia A. Tree, Karen R. Buttigieg, Francisco J. Salguero, Robert Watson, Daniel Knott, Oliver Carnell, Didier Ngabo, Michael J. Elmore, Susan Fotheringham, Adam Harding, Lucile Moyni, Philip N. Ward, Maud Dumoux, Tessa Prince, Yper Hall, Julian A. Hiscox, Andrew Owen, William James, Miles W. Carroll, James P. Stewart, James H. Naismith and Raymond J. Owens, 22 September 2021, Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25480-z

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Finding and Erasing Quantum Computing Errors in Real-Time - SciTechDaily

The potential security threats from quantum are clear but there seems to be little impetus in Brussels to regulate the technology - for now.

In the last weeks of 2023, the European Commission announced its new Declaration on Quantum Technologies in a bid to put the advanced technology firmly on the bloc's agenda.

The EU's Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton said it was a step toward creating a "Quantum Valley" in Europe.

The joint declaration has so far been endorsed by 11 member states, according to a tweet by Breton, but just eight member states have actually signed it: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, and Sweden.

In recent years, the EU has passed several banner pieces of legislation to tackle Big Tech and regulate rapidly developing technologies, namely artificial intelligence (AI).

Quantum technology is on the minds of at least some EU policymakers but as the European Parliament elections loom in June and the European Commission enters the final months of its mandate, will it be a priority in 2024?

Quantum computing could have far-reaching effects; there have been decades of research with tech giants like IBM and Google leading the way, but the commercial deployments of quantum computing remain in their infancy.

The potential advancements of the technology have served to underline a need for preparing the ground for the future.

Computers as we know them now process bits of information, ones and zeros, while quantum computers on the other hand calculate qubits, which can be both 1 and 0 at the same time.

In simplest terms, that means quantum computers can carry out multiple calculations simultaneously rather than individually. This means faster computations.

The benefits could mean the rapid development of new drugs while on the flipside, there are dangers. Existing encryption protocols on the Internet could be cracked much quicker with a quantum computer.

The Declaration on Quantum Technologies isn't the first effort of its kind.

In 2018, both the Quantum Technologies Flagship and the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking were established to support quantum computing developments in Europe.

These efforts haven't been lost on industry.

Dr Joe Fitzsimons heads up Horizon Quantum Computing, based in Singapore, and recently established an EU base for the company in Dublin to expand its presence in Europe.

"There's definitely been a reasonable amount of support. There's this Quantum Flagship programme, which has been a big driver in Europe. At the same time, you have Germany investing additional capital in the space, which is certainly giving rise to a wave of spin-offs in Germany".

Looking across Europe, there is a mixed bag of initiatives in member states.

The Netherlands launched its national quantum strategy in 2019 with Quantum Delta NL, established to help quantum research in universities and commercialise it.

Meanwhile, Ireland announced a national quantum strategy last November. However, neither of these countries have signed up to the new declaration.

An Irish government spokesperson told Euronews Next it would consider signing the declaration "following consultations with the quantum community".

Herbert Mangesius is a general partner at investment firm Vsquared Ventures, which has backed European quantum computing start-ups like IQM. He said that there needs to be more coordination in Europe when it comes to quantum tech.

"I wish on a European level we'd really think of what have, where are the strengths in the regions and then really concentrate and not do the same thing in every country," he said.

Each member state pursuing their own strategy won't yield significant results, he said, but rather the efforts "need to be more clustered into regions" based on specialities.

Europe ought to consider how it can contribute to building hardware and quantum computing chips, Mangesius added.

The EU already has the Chips Act to stimulate the semiconductor industry more generally, but these types of efforts need to focus on quantum too, he said.

Ish Dhand leads QC Design, a German start-up developing design software for quantum computers, which is a Vsquared portfolio company. He agrees that partnerships are to Europes advantage if it is to keep up with the US and China in the quantum race.

"In North America and China, there are full stack companies focusing on moonshots, trying to build everything in-house. An [example] here is Intel. They would want to make their own chips and sell full processors in the end," he said.

"Things are different in Europe in that there are much more partnerships and there are many more smaller companies".

While Breton stood front and centre at the announcement of the European Declaration of Quantum Technologies, it remains unclear how quantum will be addressed at a policy level.

"The Commission does not envisage new legislative proposals in quantum technologies before the end of the current mandate," a spokesperson for the Commission told Euronews Next.

In the world of politics, priorities can shift on a whim, especially after an election.

The Dutch quantum strategy, for example, has received 615 million in funding from the Dutch government but following the victory of far-right candidate Geert Wilders in the Netherlands' general election, future funding becomes uncertain.

"The negotiations to form a new government, after the recent elections, started after the Christmas break, the direction and outcome of these negotiations are unclear for now. We expect changes of funding forms and routings coming from the Dutch Government, but its all unclear for now," a spokesperson for Quantum Delta NL said.

For Horizon's Fitzsimons, there are no immediate challenges posed by quantum computing unlike AI that lawmakers in Europe need to quickly address but the time will come eventually.

The chief concern is cybersecurity. While quantum computing promises great breakthroughs in the speed of computation, it presents risks to security.

Existing encryption protocols on the Internet, which guard the likes of encrypted messaging or online banking services, could be broken by superfast quantum computers.

"You need a much more sophisticated quantum computer than we currently have but they're not 100 years away; they're maybe five or 10 years away," Fitzsimons said.

"It's in the foreseeable future, it's something that we need to plan for".

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Is quantum computing the next technology on the EU's regulation agenda? - Euronews