Cleveland Clinic, with IBM and Japan’s RIKEN, has achieved the largest-ever quantum simulation of protein structure.<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND \u2014 <\/p>\n
Cleveland Clinic just did something that’s never been done before <\/p>\n
This is not science fiction. Cleveland<\/a> Clinic researchers, working alongside scientists at IBM and Japan’s RIKEN research institute, have used quantum computing to simulate protein structures<\/a> containing up to 12,635 atoms \u2014 the largest biologically meaningful molecular simulation ever performed with quantum hardware.<\/p>\n To put that in perspective: just six months ago, the same method could only handle structures roughly 40 times smaller. And the accuracy of a key step in the process improved by as much as 210 times over that same period.<\/p>\n The technique pairs IBM’s quantum processors with two of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers \u2014 Fugaku at RIKEN in Japan, and Miyabi-G, operated by the University of Tokyo and the University of Tsukuba. Classical computers broke down enormous protein-ligand complexes into smaller, computable pieces. IBM’s 156-qubit quantum processors \u2014 including the one housed right here at Cleveland Clinic \u2014 then calculated the quantum-mechanical behavior of each fragment. The results were reassembled into a complete molecular picture that conventional computers or artificial intelligence alone could not produce.<\/p>\n Why does this matter to you? One of the most time-consuming and costly steps in developing new medicines is figuring out how a drug candidate binds to its protein target. That process currently takes years and enormous resources. This research is a major step toward changing that.<\/p>\n “By crossing the 12,000-atom barrier, we have significantly expanded the scale of biologically meaningful molecular simulations possible with quantum computing,” said Kenneth Merz, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a staff scientist in Cleveland Clinic’s Computational Life Sciences Department. “We demonstrated a framework for applying these methods to scientifically relevant problems at a larger scale.”<\/p>\n The team sees this as a starting point \u2014 with a clear path toward even larger, more accurate simulations that could one day model enzyme behavior, drug mechanisms, and other molecular processes currently only studied through hands-on laboratory experimentation.<\/p>\n
Prior authorization \u2014 the requirement that patients get insurance company approval before a procedure is covered \u2014 has long been one of the most despised aspects of American health insurance, loathed by patients and doctors alike. Now, the nation’s largest commercial insurer is making a significant move to scale it back.<\/p>\n
\nUnitedHealthcare takes aim at one of health insurance’s biggest frustrations <\/p>\n