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In the realm of quantum computing and molecular science, a new paper by Insilico Medicine, a leader in AI-driven drug discovery, is turning heads.

The researchers, in collaboration with the University of Torontos Acceleration Consortium and Foxconn Research Institute, have unveiled a novel approach that integrates quantum computing with the study of living organisms.

This fascinating work holds the promise of deepening our understanding of complex biological processes like aging and disease.

The foundation for this innovative approach was laid in May 2023 when the collaborative team published their research on quantum generative adversarial networks in generative chemistry in the American Chemical Societys Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.

This marked a significant stride in demonstrating the potential benefits of quantum computing in this field.

The latest paper from Insilico builds upon this foundation. It offers a comprehensive view of how a fusion of AI, quantum computing, and the physics of complex systems can lead to new insights into human health.

The researchers highlight the latest advancements in physics-guided AI, emphasizing its potential in revolutionizing our understanding of biological phenomena.

AI has been instrumental in helping scientists process and analyze vast, intricate biological datasets, uncovering new disease pathways and linking aging and disease at the cellular level.

However, applying these insights to more complex interactions within the body remains a challenge.

According to the Insilico team, overcoming this hurdle requires multimodal modeling methods that can handle the complexity of scale, algorithms, and ever-growing datasets.

While we are not a quantum company, it is important to utilize capabilities to take advantage of the speed provided by the new hybrid computing solutions and hyperscalers, says 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 personalized interventions with desired properties for a broad range of diseases and age-associated processes. We are very happy to see our research center in the UAE producing valuable insights in this area, Zhavoronkov concludes.

The paper delves into the intricate biological processes that span from cellular to organ to systemic levels, highlighting the need for simultaneous multi-scale analysis.

With the advent of projects like the 1000 Genomes Project and the UK Biobank, which have generated an unprecedented volume of biological data, the necessity for immense computing power to process and analyze this data has never been greater.

Quantum computing emerges as a game-changer in this context. Its ability to augment AI methods, thanks to the unique properties of qubits that hold values of both 0 and 1 simultaneously (unlike classical bits), provides vastly superior computing speed and capability.

This advancement is evidenced by IBMs recent developments in quantum computing, including a utility-scale quantum processor and the first modular quantum computer.

The authors advocate for a physics-guided AI approach to gain a deeper understanding of human biology.

This emerging field, combining physics-based and neural network models, is poised to unlock new dimensions of biological research.

By leveraging AI, quantum computing, and complex systems physics, scientists are better equipped to understand how interactions at smaller scales within cells, organisms, or societies give rise to emergent characteristics observable at larger scales.

In summary, this research represents a significant leap forward in computational molecular science. By harnessing the combined powers of AI and quantum computing, researchers are on the cusp of unraveling some of the most intricate mysteries of life, paving the way for revolutionary discoveries in human health and disease.

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Quantum computing can help decode the mysteries of aging and disease - Earth.com

Quantum computers have just started to enter the mainstream awareness. Although the shift from classical to quantum computers is still ongoing and the technology experimental, the potential consequences could be far-reaching once we successfully harness the technology to societys benefit. That puts the spotlight on quantum innovation stocks leading the way forward.

Note that these quantum innovation stocks are approaching the idea and unique problems of quantum computing differently. Some are taking a high-risk, experimental approach that delves deep into the unexplored regions of physics and engineering, while others are taking the more conservative track one thats better understood.

In this article, I present three companies considered quantum innovation stocks and detail their approaches and progress to get their respective quantum systems online and commercialized. Here are the companies to consider.

Source: shutterstock.com/LCV

IBM (NYSE:IBM) has been a leader in quantum computing research for years. It is one of the first companies to supply customers with cloud-based quantum computing systems, and the company recently announced it was broadening its hardware offerings, too.

The company recently announced plans to install an IBM Quantum Systems Two processor at KQCs facility in Busan, Korea, by 2028. The processor is expected to be part of the IBM Flamingo family, featuring 156 qubits per module and support for up to 7 modules.

The big picture is that this reportedly attracted the attention of blue-chip clients in the Korean financial, bio-healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. Those sectors could be heavy experimental users of quantum machines.

Quantum computers are exponentially more powerful than classical computers, and their commercialization could lead to crucial scientific developments and breakthroughs presently unreachable.

Trading at just 24.6 times earnings, IBM could be seen as undervalued in light of its progress in quantum computing.

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Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) has made significant strides in quantum computing. The company claimed to have achieved quantum supremacy in 2019. Since then, it has worked tirelessly to improve the stability and power of its quantum systems.

The company claims to be leading the quantum computing arms race, which it is apparently demonstrating by reducing the error rates of its quantum system. Last year, Googles 3rd generation Sycamore processor was reported to typically experience error rates between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100.

The above progress marks the second step in Googles roadmap to building an error-corrected quantum computer, and its progress seems to be accelerating.

I think quantum as an additional growth tailwind makes Alphabet a strong buy. In the short term, analysts expect its EPS to surge 16.36% in FY2024, so this may give investors something more immediate while they wait for the quantum computing market to hit its full stride.

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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is another tech behemoth with substantial interest in quantum technologies.

MSFT, in my opinion, is one of the better stocks positioned to take advantage of this computing development. Thats because its one of the few companies to release its development toolkit Q#.

That is a highly underappreciated feature and seems to be unique to Microsoft. Q# is the programming language developers will use to develop sophisticated quantum algorithms to power applications. MSFT is already courting developers to learn and utilize this language, which interfaces with Microsofts cloud service, Azure.

Hypothetically, suppose Q# gains widespread acceptance amongst developers. That would be a significant competitive advantage and moat for MSFT to lean on due to the time investment of having to switch to a competing language and the first-mover advantage it presents for MSFT.

Q# could very well become the .NET for quantum applications, a language that needs highly specialized developers to work in the field.

Microsoft has experience building these types of ecosystems before, and I believe its capable of fostering a similar one with Q#. Its a possibility that investors should keep in mind.

On the date of publication, Matthew Farley did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Matthew started writing coverage of the financial markets during the crypto boom of 2017 and was also a team member of several fintech startups. He then started writing about Australian and U.S. equities for various publications. His work has appeared in MarketBeat, FXStreet, Cryptoslate, Seeking Alpha, and the New Scientist magazine, among others.

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3 Stocks at the Forefront of Quantum Innovation - InvestorPlace

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