Scientists have successfully shown a quantum computer can improve the accuracy and reach of generative artificial intelligence drug discovery models. And they did it using their spare time and money leftover from other projects.

The Technical University of Denmark team ran their generative AI model for predicting proteins in conjunction with a printer-sized quantum computer built by British startup ORCA Computing, which sped up AI by linking quantum machines with traditional processors. The researchers used the hybrid technique to generate novel peptides—short chains of amino acids—capable of binding to specific proteins in the body. Doing so is a crucial step in vaccine development.

The team of researchers worked weekends and pooled unspent money from other projects because "most innovative science is too scary for foundations,” according to DTU professor Timothy Patrick Jenkins, who led the project.

Making the peptides in the laboratory and testing whether these would bind to the particular proteins showed the model produced more successful peptides than its classical counterpart, with the strongest improvements where training data was rare.

The team believe the machine could accelerate the development of personalized immunotherapies and vaccines, as well as improve drugs’ efficacy in understudied groups.

“We needed to really prove it to convince skeptics that our predictions connect to the real world,” Patrick Jenkins tells WIRED. Quantum computing remains a nascent field and faces intense scrutiny due to the technical challenges of building these machines and successfully applying them to solve problems.

Even Patrick Jenkins was initially reluctant to explore the technology: “I was a huge quantum skeptic” he says with a laugh, believing any application to his work would be “decades away.”

He and his team use big data and AI to discover proteins which could unlock new immunotherapies cheaper and faster, often funde...