Predicting drug-target binding affinity with limited training data remains a central challenge in computational drug discovery. We introduce a hybrid quantum-classical framework combining molecular descriptors with variational quantum circuits for interpretable binding affinity prediction. Seven physicochemical descriptors (MW, logP, TPSA, HBD/HBA, rotatable bonds, aromatic rings) were encoded into 6-qubit variational circuits using parameterized rotations and controlled-Z entanglement. Quantum kernels were extracted and used for regression on 1,200 BindingDB molecules across kinase, GPCR, and protease targets, with external validation on 300 ChEMBL compounds. Performance was compared against SVR, random forest, gradient boosting, and neural network baselines using 100-fold bootstrap validation. Variational quantum regression achieved MSE = 0.056 ± 0.009, outperforming SVR by 32% (0.082 ± 0.013), RF by 28%, and GBM by 24%. Quantum advantage was most significant in low-data regimes (n < 500), where VQR maintained R2 > 0.85 versus R2 < 0.72 for classical methods. External validation confirmed generalization (R2 = 0.83). Our Explainable Quantum Pharmacology framework revealed TPSA and logP as dominant predictive features through gradientbased sensitivity analysis, aligning with established medicinal chemistry principles. Quantum kernels provide measurable, chemically interpretable improvements for molecular property prediction in data-limited scenarios. This work demonstrates practical quantum advantage for early-stage drug discovery applications on near-term quantum hardware.
Predicting drug-target binding affinity with limited training data remains a central challenge in computational drug discovery. We introduce a hybrid quantum-classical framework combining molecular descriptors with variational quantum circuits for interpretable binding affinity prediction. Seven physicochemical descriptors (MW, logP, TPSA, HBD/HBA, rotatable bonds, aromatic rings) were encoded into 6-qubit variational circuits using parameterized rotations and controlled-Z entanglement. Quantum kernels were extracted and used for regression on 1,200 BindingDB molecules across kinase, GPCR, and protease targets, with external validation on 300 ChEMBL compounds. Performance was compared against SVR, random forest, gradient boosting, and neural network baselines using 100-fold bootstrap validation. Variational quantum regression achieved MSE = 0.056 ± 0.009, outperforming SVR by 32% (0.082 ± 0.013), RF by 28%, and GBM by 24%. Quantum advantage was most significant in low-data regimes (n < 500), where VQR maintained R2 > 0.85 versus R2 < 0.72 for classical methods. External validation confirmed generalization (R2 = 0.83). Our Explainable Quantum Pharmacology framework revealed TPSA and logP as dominant predictive features through gradientbased sensitivity analysis, aligning with established medicinal chemistry principles. Quantum kernels provide measurable, chemically interpretable improvements for molecular property prediction in data-limited scenarios. This work demonstrates practical quantum advantage for early-stage drug discovery applications on near-term quantum hardware.
Recent advances in quantum machine learning (QML) have opened new pathways for accelerating early-stage drug discovery through molecular representation in Hilbert space [1]–[3]. In this work, we present a hybrid quantum–classical framework that integrates quantum kernel estimation and variational quantum neural networks (QNNs) for ligand–target binding prediction [4], [5].A synthetic dataset reflecting the statistical behavior of the BindingDB database [6] was constructed to evaluate quantum descriptors and kernel performance under controlled conditions. The proposed quantum feature maps translate seven key molecular descriptors—molecular weight (MW), logP, hydrogen bond donors (HBD), acceptors (HBA), rotatable bonds (RB), aromatic rings (AR), and topological polar surface area (TPSA)—into entangled qubit states [7], [8].Comparative analyses with classical baselines (SVR, Random Forest, and deep neural networks) revealed that quantum embeddings achieve competitive predictive accuracy (RMSE ≈ 0.06) with improved stability under bootstrap resampling [9]. Quantum kernel alignment and sensitivity studies demonstrated that aromaticity and polarity jointly determine the representational power of QML models [10].Beyond performance, we emphasize Explainable Quantum Pharmacology (EQP)—a paradigm in which interpretability, reproducibility, and physicochemical causality are as essential as accuracy [11].Our findings establish a reproducible, interpretable, and computationally efficient foundation for hybrid QML pipelines in molecular modeling, paving the way for next-generation AI-driven drug discovery.
Drug repositioning is a less expensive and time-consuming method than the traditional method of drug discovery. It is a strategy for identifying new uses for approved or investigational drugs that are outside the scope of the original medical indication. A key strategy in repositioning approved or investigational drugs is determining the binding affinity of these drugs to target proteins. The large increase in available experimental data has helped deep learning methods to demonstrate superior performance compared to conventional prediction and other traditional computational methods in precise binding affinity prediction. However, these methods are complex and time-consuming, presenting a significant barrier to their development and practical application. In this context, quantum computing (QC) and quantum machine learning (QML) theoretically offer promising solutions to effectively address these challenges. In this work, we introduce a hybrid quantum–classical framework to predict binding affinity. Our approach involves, initially, the implementation of an efficient classical model using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for feature extraction and three fully connected layers for prediction. Subsequently, retaining the classical module for feature extraction, we implement various quantum and classical modules for binding affinity prediction, which accept the concatenated features as input. Quantum predicted modules are implemented with Variational Quantum Regressions (VQRs), while classical predicted modules are implemented with various fully connected layers. Our findings clearly show that hybrid quantum–classical models accelerate the training process in terms of epochs and achieve faster stabilization. Also, these models demonstrate quantum superiority in terms of complexity, accuracy, and generalization, thereby indicating a promising direction for QML.
Accurate prediction of binding affinities and efficient lead optimization remain central challenges in computational drug discovery, particularly for complex biological targets characterized by rugged energy landscapes, conformational heterogeneity, and high-dimensional interaction spaces. Classical computational methods—such as molecular docking, force-field–based simulations, and deep learning models—have made substantial progress, yet they often struggle to capture quantum-mechanical effects and long-range correlations critical to molecular recognition. This study explores a quantum-enhanced framework that integrates Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs), quantum-inspired Hamiltonian modeling, and hybrid quantum–classical optimization workflows to improve the fidelity and scalability of drug discovery pipelines. By encoding molecular interactions into parameterized quantum circuits, the framework leverages quantum superposition and entanglement to explore complex chemical space more efficiently, enabling refined estimation of binding energies and accelerated identification of high-quality leads. Preliminary simulations indicate that VQA-based estimators outperform classical baselines for challenging protein–ligand systems, reducing prediction error while maintaining computational tractability. These findings highlight the emerging potential of quantum technologies to enable more accurate, data-efficient, and mechanistically grounded drug discovery for next-generation therapeutics.
The pharmaceutical industry faces mounting challenges in drug discovery, where exploring a chemical space exceeding 10 60 possible compounds remains computationally prohibitive. Traditional in-silico screening approaches struggle to capture the quantum mechanical interactions that determine molecular behavior. To overcome these limitations, this study introduces a hybrid quantum–classical machine learning framework that uniquely integrates molecular graph theory with quantum-enhanced learning for accelerated drug discovery. Using the QM9 benchmark dataset containing 133,885 molecules of low-to-medium structural complexity, we extract Laplacian eigenvalue spectra as topological descriptors that preserve both connectivity and electronic information. These features are jointly processed by Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) in a weighted ensemble architecture designed for balanced generalization. The Quantum Graph Neural Network (QGNN) component achieves 97.5% accuracy, while the hybrid ensemble attains 100.0% accuracy, confirming strong predictive reliability. Although quantum training requires roughly 3.2× longer computation, it captures high-dimensional correlations that classical methods overlook. Overall, the proposed framework bridges the gap between theoretical quantum computing and practical pharmaceutical modeling, providing a scalable, physics-inspired pathway toward intelligent molecular screening and next-generation drug discovery systems.
Quantum machine learning (QML) has attracted significant interest in drug discovery due to its potential to model complex molecular interactions and improve prediction accuracy for protein-ligand binding affinity. However, most existing hybrid quantum-classical approaches rely on static architectures that apply quantum computation uniformly across all samples, regardless of molecular complexity or prediction confidence. Such static execution strategies lead to inefficient quantum resource utilization and limit scalability on near-term noisy intermediatescale quantum (NISQ) devices. In this paper, we propose an uncertainty-aware adaptive hybrid quantum-classical learning framework for protein-ligand binding affinity prediction that treats quantum computation as a selectively invoked resource rather than a constant component of the learning pipeline. The proposed framework first employs a classical ensemble-based regression model to generate binding affinity predictions along with an associated uncertainty estimate derived from ensemble variance. This uncertainty information is then used by a decision mechanism to dynamically select between classical-only inference, shallow quantum circuit execution, or deep quantum circuit execution. By adapting the quantum circuit depth and invocation frequency to the predicted uncertainty, the framework enables decision-centric allocation of quantum resources. Experimental evaluation of binding affinity data demonstrates that the recommended adaptive framework utilizes around 76 % less quantum resources than static hybrid quantum learning methods that use fixed-depth quantum circuits for all samples. The framework also preserves decision-level functionality and a steady inference workflow. These findings highlight the effectiveness of uncertainty-guided adaptivity as a practical strategy and offer a scalable foundation for future quantum-enhanced molecular learning.method for incorporating QML into drug development pipelines while taking hardware constraints into consideration.
One of the main challenges in drug discovery is to find molecules that bind specifically and strongly to their target protein while having minimal binding to other proteins. By predicting binding affinity, it is possible to identify the most promising candidates from a large pool of potential compounds, reducing the number of compounds that need to be tested experimentally. Recently, deep learning methods have shown superior performance than traditional computational methods for making accurate predictions on large datasets. However, the complexity and time-consuming nature of these methods have limited their usage and development. Quantum machine learning is an emerging technology that has the potential to improve many classical machine learning algorithms. In this work we present a hybrid quantum-classical convolutional neural network, which is able to reduce by 20% the complexity of the classical network while maintaining optimal performance in the predictions. Additionally, it results in a significant time savings of up to 40% in the training process, which means a meaningful speed up of the drug discovery process.