2026-10-06 Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN, and IBM simulate 12,635-atom protein complex

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It can take more than a decade for a medical discovery to become a drug doctors can prescribe.

Researchers from @Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN and IBM are exploring how hybrid quantum-classical workflows could help accelerate this timeline–with exciting results.

Earlier this year, the collaboration successfully simulated the chemistry of two protein complexes with binding agents, T4-Lysozyme and Trypsin. The largest simulation of a Trypsin complex reached 12,635 atoms and more than 30,000 orbitals, earning the milestone of largest heterogeneous quantum-classical (HQC) electronic-structure calculation to date: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/cleveland-clinic-riken-chemistry

Recently nominated as a 2026 Gordon Bell finalist (https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/gordon-bell-finalists-2026), the work showed an improvement in accuracy by 210x within a key step of the workflow over previous approaches, attained through new algorithm developments and the close integration of QPUs, CPUs and GPUs.

In the latest entry of our research spotlight series, Dr. Kennie Merz. and Dr. Lara Jehi from Cleveland Clinic join IBM Quantum Head of Applied Quantum Science - Sarah Sheldon to explain how this deep integration of computing paradigms, known as quantum-centric supercomputing, helped achieve this remarkable moment in chemistry simulation at scale.

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IBM Research

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English

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