NEC and Partners Win NEDO Funding for Quantum Cancer Immunotherapy Project

What was selected

According to NEC, the project is titled "Development and Demonstration of a Computational and Evaluation Platform for Next-Generation Cancer Immunotherapy Using Quantum Computing Technology." It was selected for the Large-Scale Demonstration for Use Case Creation under the Research and Development Project of the Enhanced Infrastructures for Post-5G Information and Communication Systems, which is administered by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

The five participants are NEC Corporation, Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research (JFCR), the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Waseda University. They plan to combine their expertise in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, drug discovery and immunology. The goal is a computational and evaluation platform that enables the optimal design and immunological validation of neoantigen candidates, which are regarded as promising targets for cancer immunotherapy.

The scientific problem

Cancer immunotherapy uses the body's own immune system to eliminate cancer cells. NEC notes that immune checkpoint inhibitors are among the most widely used approaches, but that not all patients derive sufficient benefit from them. This has created demand for new forms of treatment.

One candidate is therapy targeting neoantigens, which are antigens generated by cancer-specific mutations and are absent from normal tissues. They are presented on the cell surface by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules and can trigger antigen-specific immune responses. NEC says CD4-positive T-cell responses induced through MHC class II molecules are expected to play a pivotal role in activating other immune cells and sustaining immune responses.

The difficulty, according to the company, is that the biological factors governing MHC class II-mediated responses, including amino acid sequence characteristics, MHC class II binding and cell surface presentation, remain highly complex and less understood. No systematic methods have been established for designing and optimizing neoantigen sequences that induce CD4-positive T-cell responses while accounting for these factors. The number of possible amino acid sequence combinations is vast.

How the project will work

The project is scheduled to run from September 2026 to March 2029. It is framed as a drug discovery use case for quantum computing and AI. The plan has several steps:

• AI will predict and score immune responses to neoantigen candidates.
• Quantum computing will be applied to the design of amino acid sequences flanking the neoantigen core region.
• Researchers will evaluate whether these methods can produce diverse and promising sequence candidates from a vast number of combinations.
• The immune response to the optimized sequences will then be tested in immunological experiments.

Results from those experiments will be fed back into the computational models and AI-based prediction and evaluation methods. The aim is a new drug discovery pipeline that integrates feedback between computational candidate design and experimental validation.

The work will use the ABCI-Q computing infrastructure, which integrates quantum computing, high-performance computing (HPC) and AI. It is being developed by the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT) at AIST.

What it means

The project is a research effort, and the source gives no results or performance figures. What it shows is a publicly backed attempt to test whether quantum computing can help explore a broader design space and generate diverse neoantigen candidates with enhanced immunogenicity. Looking ahead, the participants say they aim to accelerate research and development of drug discovery innovations using quantum technologies originating in Japan.