A team developing light-sensitive cancer drugs has won a US$2-million Quantum for Bio (Q4Bio) prize for demonstrating a potential use for quantum computers in health care. But no team was awarded the competition's $5-million grand prize. Prize organizers announced the winning team, made up of researchers from quantum software firm Algorithmiq, based in Helsinki, technology giant IBM and the Cleveland Clinic hospital in Ohio, on 16 April. The winning group is working on improving a type of cancer drug that can be activated using light once it reaches a tumour, making it less toxic to the rest of the body than regular therapies are. The team members simulated the way one such drug molecule interacts with light. They eventually want to work out how tweaking the make-up of the active molecule in the drug affects its properties, with the hope of applying it to many cancer types. Such complex simulations are too difficult for today's quantum computers to perform. Instead, the team used a...
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