Shahar Keinan

Polaris Quantum Biotech, USA

Title: A Quantum Revolution in Drug Discovery

---

Biography

Dr Shahar Keinan is the cofounder and CEO of Polaris Quantum Biotech. She has over 20 years of extensive experience in the field of computational and theoretical chemistry and published over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the fields of in-silico drug design and discovery, as well as molecular materials design and computational methods development. Shahar has received a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, after which she moved to Northwestern University and Duke University for a post-doc positions. Previously she was CSO of Cloud Pharmaceuticals and has been instrumental in the development of the Quantum Molecular Design process since its inception at Duke University, and has pioneered the use of computational chemistry algorithms to optimize electro-optical materials and small molecule drugs.

Abstract

Polaris Quantum Biotech (POLARISqb), the first drug discovery platform built on a quantum computer, is transforming health for people everywhere by revolutionizing drug design with the acceleration of lead time for preclinical drug candidates. Drug development begins with drug discovery – a three year and $4 million dollar process. The POLARISqb drug design platform enables real-time adaptability by compressing the lead time for preclinical drug candidates from years to months. We are using quantum computers to solve a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem by identifying lead compounds from virtual libraries of billions of molecules. Here we will discuss previous work on rapid design of lead-like compounds for the Dengue viral RNA-dependent-RNA polymerase (RdRp) and how we can apply the POLARISqb platform to other targets.