Helsinki’s Algorithmiq Wins €1.7M Prize For Quantum Cancer Drug Discovery Research

The company was the only participant to demonstrate quantum computing’s potential to simulate complex therapeutics, marking progress toward near-term quantum advantage in healthcare applications.

The award concludes the Quantum for Bio (Q4Bio) challenge, a €42.3 million global programme designed to test real-world biology and healthcare use cases on emerging quantum hardware.

Algorithmiq developed its solution using current quantum systems, ensuring biological relevance and validating results against advanced classical methods under realistic conditions.

Other finalists included research teams from Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Oxford, University of Nottingham, and Infleqtion.

Founded in 2020 by Dr Sabrina Maniscalco, Guillermo García-Pérez (CSO), Matteo Rossi (CTO), and Boris Sokolov (Lead Researcher), Algorithmiq develops quantum software designed to make quantum computers practically useful in chemistry, materials science, and life sciences through efficient, physics-based computation.

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The company has developed an end-to-end quantum–classical workflow for chemistry simulations, deployed on IBM hardware using up to 100 qubits. It has been used to model the activation pathway of a photosensitiser drug currently in Phase II clinical trials, highlighting a scalable path toward quantum advantage in drug discovery.

Algorithmiq focuses on proving real-world value for quantum computing beyond theoretical benchmarks, particularly in complex healthcare and pharmaceutical applications.

Its award-winning project was developed in collaboration with IBM and the Cleveland Clinic, combining quantum computing expertise with biological research. The work focused on photodynamic therapy, an emerging cancer treatment that uses light-activated drugs to target tumour cells with fewer side effects.

The team demonstrated that quantum-generated data can be integrated into AI-driven discovery pipelines to identify new drug candidates, with broader applications across healthcare and life sciences.

Dr Sabrina Maniscalco, CEO and co-founder of Algorithmiq, said, “Algorithmiq is the first, and the only team in Q4Bio, to deliver a scalable end-to-end computational framework that combines quantum computing and AI for real therapeutic problems, demonstrated on up to 100 qubits. It shows that quantum computing can already tackle scientifically meaningful drug-development questions under real hardware constraints.”