July 11, 2023. Repost from 1910 Genetics and Microsoft Blog - Jen Nwankwo, PhD, Founder & CEO of 1910 Genetics recently announced the company's collaboration with Microsoft. "I’m excited to announce our collaboration with Microsoft to push the boundaries of AI-driven drug discovery by combining 1910 Genetics’ unique, dual-modality AI-powered drug discovery platform with Microsoft’s Azure Quantum Elements."
1910 Genetics integrates AI, computation and biological automation to accelerate the design of small molecule and protein therapeutics. The company blends AI-driven drug design with biological wet lab automation to increase productivity and decrease failure rates across the pharmaceutical R&D process. Using its multi-platform drug discovery engines - ELVIS™ and ROSALYND™ - 1910 Genetics can generate more novel drug candidates, shorten the timeline, cut operational costs and increase the probability of success compared to traditional pharmaceutical methods. 1910 Genetics’ therapeutic area-agnostic, end-to-end technology powers the full length of early drug discovery - from novel hit discovery to hit to lead, and lead optimization.
1910 Genetics is currently applying its technology to drug discovery programs in several areas including, but not limited to, neuroscience, oncology, immunology and infectious diseases. The company was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. More about 1910 Genetics.
Microsoft: Accelerating Scientific Discovery with Azure Quantum
From the Iron Age revolutionizing agriculture to the Silicon Age revolutionizing how we communicate, new materials have always created inflection points for societal progress. Advances in this space will be transformative. For example, the transportation industry can develop more efficient and powerful batteries. Pharmaceutical researchers can develop new drugs. The chemistry industry will be able to discover safer and more sustainable compounds for the products we use daily, like electronics, paints and textiles. And most importantly, scientists will be able to solve society’s most pressing challenges like reversing climate change and addressing food insecurity.
However, understanding nature is not an easy task. For accurate calculations of the most complex quantum states of molecules, the number of energy states of just 100 electrons can exceed the number of atoms in the visible universe.
Now, with a new generation of AI, the world’s most advanced AI models are coming together with our universal user interface – natural language – and nature’s foundational language – chemistry – ushering in a new era of scientific discovery. And that’s just the first step as we prepare for an even bigger transformation ahead of us: quantum supercomputing.
Innovators can start experimenting with the world’s best quantum hardware in Azure Quantum and get ready to solve more complex problems when quantum supercomputing becomes a reality. We are fast approaching the time when scientists and businesses will be able to solve previously intractable problems to unlock growth and human progress.
Azure Quantum Elements accelerates scientific discovery by integrating the latest breakthroughs in high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
With Azure Quantum Elements, scientists and product developers can:
- Reduce time to impact and costs by accelerating the R&D pipeline and bringing innovative products to market more quickly, with some customers seeing a six-month to one-week speed up from project kick-off to solution.
- Dramatically increase the search space for new materials, with the potential to scale from thousands of candidates to tens of millions.
- Speed up certain chemistry simulations by 500,000 times, which is like compressing a year into one minute.
- Get ready for scaled quantum computing by addressing quantum chemistry problems today with AI and HPC, while experimenting with existing quantum hardware and getting priority access to Microsoft’s quantum supercomputer in the future.
Using this comprehensive system, researchers can make advances in chemistry and materials science with unprecedented scale, speed and accuracy.
Scale. Scientists can understand the complex reactions needed to produce a product, find new candidates, and optimize the entire process. For example, scientists can now use Azure Quantum Elements to explore 1.5 million potential configurations in complex reactions comprised of 50,000 elementary steps. Early adopters are already using this massive scale to find more sustainable replacements for use in many everyday products, or entirely new products for innovative scenarios.
Speed. Azure Quantum Elements accelerates simulation by incorporating Microsoft’s specialized AI models for chemistry, which we trained on millions of chemistry and materials data points. We based these models on the same breakthrough technologies you see elsewhere with generative AI. While Copilot understands the language of humans, Azure Quantum Elements also understands the language of nature – chemistry.
Accuracy. Today, scientists are using unique AI models and HPC scale to run simulations with higher levels of accuracy not available before. Azure Quantum Elements also integrates classical and quantum computing to provide an on-ramp to even greater simulation accuracy. In the future, scientists believe a quantum supercomputer will enable predictive chemical design at 100X accuracy.
Industry innovators, including BASF, AkzoNobel, AspenTech, Johnson Matthey, SCGC, and 1910 Genetics have already adopted Azure Quantum Elements to transform their research and development, and today, others can join them. Azure Quantum Elements will be available in private preview in a few weeks, and you can sign up today to learn more. More on Azure Quantum.