FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Diego, CA – April 16, 2026 – Denovicon Therapeutics has been competitively selected for an 18-month collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) to validate photonic Ising machines for molecular optimization in drug discovery.
The collaboration will benchmark Denovicon’s quantum physics-driven generative AI platform against photonic hardware at CINT’s facilities at Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The project focuses on demonstrating how specialized photonic computing hardware can accelerate multi-objective optimization to design new small-molecule drugs.
“The fundamental problem of drug discovery is to design molecules that meet the many necessary properties required of a drug molecule. Traditional computing approaches face fundamental limitations when designing new molecules across trillion-molecule spaces to meet these multiple constraints simultaneously,” said Scott Bembenek, PhD, Founder and CEO of Denovicon Therapeutics. “Photonic Ising machines offer a potential path to solve this problem, which would transform how we discover new small-molecule drugs. While several groups have looked into quantum computing in drug discovery, this collaboration will be, to our knowledge, the first to validate an end-to-end workflow combining drug discovery, multi-objective optimization, and photonic Ising hardware, which could establish a new paradigm for molecular design.“
Denovicon’s quantum physics-driven generative AI platform enables direct deployment to emerging quantum hardware like the photonic machines at CINT. The CINT collaboration will provide experimental validation of photonic approaches for pharmaceutical applications.
About Denovicon Therapeutics
Denovicon Therapeutics is developing quantum-inspired AI platforms for small molecule drug discovery, with lead programs in DNA damage response and immuno-oncology. The company is based in La Jolla, California.
About CINT
CINT is a DOE Office of Science user facility jointly operated by Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Access to CINT resources is awarded through competitive peer review.
For partnership inquiries:
Zoey Pan
Head of Strategy & External Collaborations
zoey@denovicontx.com