Quantum Drug Discovery Startup Polarisqb Announces Hiring of Pharmacologist Ian Reynolds

(PRNewswire) Polaris^qb has announced that Dr. Ian Reynolds, a world renowned expert in pharmacology, as an advisor to the company. Dr. Ian Reynolds is an experienced pharmaceutical executive who has been recognized for his work in small molecule drug discovery and has helped a number of academic researchers translate into the world of biotech research and drug development.
Following a PhD. from Johns Hopkins in pharmacology and a postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Chicago’s Neuropharmacology department, Dr. Reynolds has been involved in a number of successful pharmaceutical ventures, including Knopp Biosciences and Teva Pharmaceuticals before taking over as the CEO of Belgium’s Rewind Therapeutics in 2018. He has studied a wide variety of Central Nervous System (CNS) diseases over the course of his career, investigating drug targets and therapeutic treatments for diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis..
Both Dr. Reynolds and Polaris^qb are excited about the continued development of the Tachyontm quantum drug discovery platform, as it holds great promise for novel drug development for many diseases that have proven difficult or impossible for researchers to reach. Strong computational models will end up enabling researchers to look at much more complex chemical interactions. As Dr. Reynolds stated, “The current in silico process for drug discovery requires that scientists simplify the characteristics they are testing for, to fall within the limits of classical computational parameters. The promise of computer aided drug design on a quantum system is that researchers could factor for a multitude of properties on a single run, allowing for a much more efficient process, better results, and shorter drug development timelines.” By utilizing quantum computing, the Tachyontm platform is able to identify the right molecule that will become a drug from a library of billion molecules in a fraction of the time that it would take for classical systems to run the same combinatorial optimizations.
Polarisqb is utilizing quantum computing to reduce the timelines of computer aided drug discovery many times over. Dr. Reynolds expertise in pharmacology, and especially in CNS diseases, will drive forward the promise of quantum computing aided drug design. Dr. Reynolds predicts that “The future of protein targeting will likely be 100% in silico, but we are currently in the process of transitioning between a largely wet lab dependent operation and more powerful computing solutions like the Tachyon system that Polarisqb is building. These systems have the potential to revolutionize the optimization process and with it the entire drug research and development industry.”