Fields-CQAM Welcomes ProteinQure to its Startup Program
Fields-CQAM welcomes Toronto based biotech firm ProteinQure to its incubation program.
The Fields Centre for Quantitative Analysis and Modelling (Fields-CQAM) is excited to announce the first member of its 2018 - 2019 cohort of incubated startups, ProteinQure.
ProteinQure, a Toronto based biotech firm co-founded by Mark Fingerhuth, Chris Ing, Lucas Siow, and Tomas Babej, creates computational R&D tools to perform protein-drug design in-silico. The discovery of new protein drugs poses a challenge for pharmaceutical and computational drug-discovery companies alike, due to their structural complexity and dynamic flexibility. Current approaches to target driven drug discovery are laborious, commonly utilizing high throughput screening to identify potential molecules of interest. ProteinQure tackles the problem from a novel angle, leveraging quantum computing and artificial intelligence to enable the rational design of protein-based drugs via simulations of the protein folding and binding process.
“We’re very excited to be working with ProteinQure,” said Fields Deputy Director Huaxiong Huang. “As the only company in the biotech space employing quantum computing and reinforcement learning to tackle problems in structural biology and drug design, they have the potential to disrupt existing drug discovery platforms by rapidly accelerating and facilitating the drug discovery process.”
The Fields Institute has a long history of fostering some of the best and brightest Canadian startups of the last fifteen years, including Sigma Analysis, R2 Financial Technologies, and Synchrony Consulting Services. Fields-CQAM builds on this tradition, encouraging the founding of and supporting startups based on mathematical techniques with real-world applications. The Centre’s incubation program places its entrepreneurs at the heart of a thriving mathematical ecosystem, giving them access to the physical, intellectual, and logistical resources of Fields-CQAM, the Fields Institute, and its partners.
“Partnering with the Fields Institute is a huge honour for our team. At ProteinQure we're continuously pushing the boundaries in the fields of mathematics, computer science and theoretical physics,” said Mark Fingerhuth, founder and CEO of ProteinQure. “Being a member of the Fields-CQAM incubator program enables us to rapidly advance our mathematical research and provides us with a platform to share our novel contributions at the intersection of near-term quantum computing and drug discovery.”
By facilitating access to talent and cutting-edge mathematical research, Fields-CQAM is empowering its startups with the tools and networks needed to help push them to the forefront of Ontario’s burgeoning tech sector.By facilitating access to talent and cutting-edge mathematical research, Fields-CQAM is empowering its startups with the tools and networks needed to help push them to the forefront of Ontario’s burgeoning tech sector.