SandboxAQ Announces Bio-Pharma Molecular Simulation Division to Accelerate Patient Delivery of Life-Saving Drugs Through AI and Quantum Solutions
Insider Summary
- SandboxAQ announced that AQBioSim, its bio-pharma molecular simulation division, has emerged from the shadows.
- The division also includes customers from the bio-pharmaceutical industry heavyweights, including AstraZeneca and Sanofi.
- These companies work closely with AQBioSim in the treatment of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other conditions.
PRESS RELEASE — After several years of stealth development, SandboxAQ today officially announced its bio-pharma molecular simulation division, AQBioSim, and some of its customers. This division helps bio-pharmaceutical and research institutions achieve breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other conditions. The company currently works with various bio-pharma companies and university research labs, including AstraZeneca, Sanofi, and UC San Francisco.
Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi said, “We are excited about the work SandboxAQ is doing to revolutionize drug discovery and development through in-silico simulation of molecular interactions using AI and quantum technology. SandboxAQ’s leapfrog technology can significantly impact preclinical and clinical drug development, and we look forward to seeing how it can support us in delivering life-changing care to patients around the world, more quickly.”
“SandboxAQ is at the forefront of combining AI and quantum engineering to solve big enterprise challenges. SandboxAQ’s technology is revolutionizing the drug discovery and development process,” said Eric Schmidt, Chair of the Board of SandboxAQ. “Through collaborations with AstraZeneca, Sanofi, UCSF and others, SandboxAQ reduces time and cost to bring life-saving care to the world of clinics. This is just the beginning of applying AQ technology throughout our economy.”
SandboxAQ enhances existing methods by providing a faster time-to-solution solution, while maintaining accuracy. Early customer achievements demonstrate that this technology can reduce the time and cost of developing new therapeutics, and reduce the risk of drug portfolios before they enter the preclinical and clinical stages.
“Our AQ-powered solution accelerates the drug discovery and development process, reducing its slow, complex and error-prone nature,” said Nadia Harhen, division leader of AQBioSim. “By shortening the discovery funnel, reducing portfolio risk, and uncovering winning formulas earlier, we empower biopharmaceutical companies and research institutions to prioritize promising compounds, accelerate therapy development, extend patent lives, drive revenue growth, and get patient cures faster. .”
This technology is utilized in collaboration with UCSF Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases in an effort to apply AI-powered simulations to rapidly identify potential therapies for neurodegenerative disorders. As part of the development, the researchers used SandboxAQ’s Absolute Free Energy Perturbation (AQ-FEPTM) software to generate thousands of predictions of molecular interactions, which resulted in some exciting new compounds.
“Neurodegenerative diseases are complex and defy standard drug designs,” says Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, who chairs the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases. “We need rational, structure-based design methods that can address the disease challenges we face. Given the devastating nature of this disease and the lack of effective therapies to treat it, techniques that accelerate new leads and reduce our discovery timeline are sorely needed.”
SandboxAQ’s unique AQ-FEP software brings state-of-the-art physics-based accuracy to the early stages of the drug discovery pathway. The company’s team of physicists, biologists, and computational chemists and pharmaceuticals have a track record of developing highly effective strategies for enhancing quantum chemical simulations using massively parallel classical hardware, including large-scale linear algebra with TPU, large-scale DFT results (SandboxAQ currently holds the record for the largest N^3 DFT simulation) and a The Post-Hartree-Fock method, called DMRG, was scaled to unprecedented sizes.
The tool serves as a catalyst for a suite of drug discovery solutions that combine the accuracy of quantum mechanical equations with the speed and power of AI available on classical computing hardware. Subsequent advances include large-scale molecular dynamics simulations capable of dealing with complex and impenetrable targets.
Other leading researchers have praised SandboxAQ’s approach and ability to accelerate drug discovery. dr. Siddharth Mukherjee, staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center and Pulitzer Prize winner, said, “SandboxAQ is unique, and the only partner I’ve ever seen produce first-class molecules. Their ability to perform meaningful quantum chemical computations on today’s hardware is critical to the first principles approaches needed today, both in oncology and other major conditions.”
“We are very pleased with our partnership with SandboxAQ where we are accelerating the identification and optimization of drug candidates at new targets in the Riboscience portfolio,” said Dr. Klaus Klumpp, co-founder and president of Riboscience. “SandboxAQ’s unprecedented large-scale absolute free energy interference solution transforms our virtual screening campaign execution and allows us to create in-silico profiles of more than 20,000 ligands per day.”
“SandboxAQ’s AI-powered quantum technologies continue to revolutionize and disrupt industries, but few will experience the transformative impact of bio-pharma and life sciences,” said Dr. Kristin Gilkes, EY Global Quantum Leader. “Companies shamelessly seek out the toughest challenges and apply technology and expertise to deliver impactful solutions – in this case, significantly advancing R&D for incurable diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s that have baffled the industry for decades. EY is excited to be collaborating with SandboxAQ on its mission to reinvent drug discovery and development.”
For general information about SandboxAQ’s Quantum Simulation & Optimization offering, please visit https://www. sandboxaq.
