"Quantum” may not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking about chemistry. But at the atomic level, the physical and chemical properties of molecules can be affected by quantum mechanical interactions. The spin of an electron, for example, is a property that is fundamentally quantum, and electron spin affects the reactivity of the molecule that the electron is part of. Every chemical reaction, therefore, is guided by the laws of quantum theory.
The modeling of quantum properties, however, is difficult, and thus the R&D costs for industries that need to understand the effects are extraordinary. A pharmaceutical company pays an average of about $2.4 billion to develop a new drug. Much of that cost is in preclinical research because chemists usually rely on trial-and-error processes to test the suitability of roughly 1000 small molecules for clinical trials. Only about 10% of clinical trials result in successful products....
