Application
Quantum Annealing Approach to Molecule Unfolding

Molecular Docking is an important step of the drug discovery process which aims at calculating the preferred position and shape of one molecule to a second when they are bound to each other. It is possible to identify three phases of Molecular Docking: 1) Ligand Expansion, i.e. unfolding of the ligand molecule; 2) Initial Placement, i.e. placement of the ligand into the protein pocket with rigid roto-translations; 3) Shape Refinement, i.e. rotation of the ligand bonds in order to match the protein pocket. In. our work, we focused on the Ligand Expansion phase and considered a quantum annealing approach to the Molecular Unfolding (MU) problem.

INDUSTRY : Life Sciences
DISCIPLINE : Optimization