LAUSR

Innovative pharmaceutical companies have started to explore quantum computing ('QC'). In this article we provide a collective industry perspective from QC domain leaders at leading pharmaceutical companies. There are immediate non-financial benefits in engaging with QC, some likely financial returns in the short term in drug development, manufacturing and supply chain, and potentially large scientific benefits in drug discovery long term. We discuss the required activities for institutionalizing QC: How to create an understanding of QC among researchers and management, which and how to deploy external resources, and how to identify the problems to be addressed with QC. If and once deployable, QC will likely have a similar trajectory as computer-aided-drug-design and artificial intelligence in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively.