By Andrea Bortolato, PhD, Mary Pitman, PhD
Building on our commitment to advance adoption and scientific rigor of AI and quantum (AQ) technology, SandboxAQ is pleased to announce our support of the Open Molecular Software Foundation (OMSF) and its Open Force Field Consortium (OpenFF) in the open source community.
OMSF, a leader in open-source molecular software, is dedicated to advancing molecular sciences by building high-quality, open-source software and sustainable communities for research software development. The OpenFF, whose members include leading biopharma and life sciences companies, strives to build more accurate small molecule force fields and improve the predictive power of computational drug discovery techniques.
Small molecule force fields are integral to our Absolute Free Energy Perturbation (AQ-FEP) software and quantum simulation solutions, which our customers use to reduce the time, cost and risk of drug discovery and advance treatment breakthroughs for some of the most challenging medical conditions. After successfully implementing OpenFF force fields in our drug discovery efforts, we are now moving towards a more integrated partnership.
Through our Open FF sponsorship, SandboxAQ is not only giving back to the open-source community that has contributed to our company’s and customers’ success, but we’re also supporting a dynamic group of like-minded researchers, engineers and technologies dedicated to advancing software solutions that have real-world impact in healthcare and life sciences.
Joining this community has many benefits. First, it puts SandboxAQ among other pioneers in AI-powered drug discovery, deepening integration within the scientific community, providing early access to new research, trends and successful approaches to leverage for our customers. It also enables us to demonstrate our expertise and capabilities, and share ideas that could potentially lead to ground-breaking joint research collaborations.
We are also delighted to welcome collaborations with other OpenFF software engineers and the Consortium Advisory Board, using our expertise to help guide the development of new features and capabilities. Having skin in the game motivates us to ensure that OpenFF succeeds, as any improvements to its open-source software also benefit our customers. For instance, researchers at UCSF’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Riboscience and our other AQBioSim customers are experiencing incredible breakthroughs in treatments for previously “undruggable” conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer – thanks, in part, to tools developed by OpenFF.
Our association with the OMSF doesn’t stop at life sciences. The Foundation creates tools and communities supporting a broad range of molecular sciences – including materials science, which has endless potential to drive innovation across numerous industries and enhance sustainability initiatives. We’re currently working with NOVONIX to help battery manufacturers accelerate R&D and testing for advanced batteries and energy storage solutions. With the recent acquisition of Good Chemistry, we are leveraging computational chemistry to help make safer chemicals by remediating the effects of three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, a.k.a “forever chemicals”) on the environment. We have ambition to similarly leverage our relationship with the OMSF to have an even greater impact in materials science as well.
We believe open-source software is a key enabler of innovation and accessibility, as is giving back to the developer and end-user communities. Last August, we open-sourced Sandwich, a framework and meta-library of cryptographic algorithms that empowers developers to build strong encryption directly into their applications. Over the last few years, many users have already benefited from accelerating their research using Tangelo, a backend agnostic, open-source Python package for end-to-end chemistry workflows on quantum computers. Supporting the OMSF is another major landmark in our open-source strategy, and we are thrilled to be a partner that contributes to its success.
Read more about SandboxAQ’s simulation solutions and contact us to find out how we can help your organization accelerate R&D in drug discovery and materials science.
