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  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="iso-abbrev">Pharmacophore</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">pharmacophorejournal.com</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">Pharmacophore</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Pharmacophore</journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="epub">2229-5402</issn>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">pharmacophorejournal.com-6946</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.51847/D59nKXqOBj</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Original research</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Quantum–Classical Drug Discovery after the Advantage Claim: Matching Computational Methods to Problems They Can Credibly Solve</article-title>
      </title-group>
                    <contrib-group>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Thompson</surname>
                <given-names>David</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                                            <xref rid="cor1" ref-type="corresp" />
                          </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Mitchell</surname>
                <given-names>Sarah</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Adams</surname>
                <given-names>Rachel</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Brown</surname>
                <given-names>James</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff3" ref-type="aff">3</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                  </contrib-group>
                  <aff id="aff1">
            <label>1</label>Department of Quantum–Classical Drug Discovery and Method Matching, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff2">
            <label>2</label>Department of Credible Problem Solving in Quantum Computing, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff3">
            <label>3</label>Department of Beyond-Advantage Claim Computational Methods, Faculty of Pharmacy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
          </aff>
                          <author-notes>
            <corresp id="cor1">
              <bold>Address for correspondence:</bold> Prof. Wael Abu Dayyih, Department of
              Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mutah University, Al-Karak 61710, Jordan.
                              E-mail: <email xlink:href="david.thompson@utoronto.ca">david.thompson@utoronto.ca</email>
                          </corresp>
          </author-notes>
                    <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>28</day>
        <month>12</month>
        <year>2025</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>16</volume>
      <issue>6</issue>
      <fpage>120</fpage>
      <lpage>130</lpage>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>
          Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Pharmacophore
        </copyright-statement>
        <copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
        <license>
          <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/"
            specific-use="textmining" content-type="ccbyncsalicense">
            https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/</ali:license_ref>
          <license-p>This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of
            the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows
            others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate
            credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <abstract>
        <title>A<sc>BSTRACT</sc></title>
        <p>Quantum computing has become increasingly visible in pharmaceutical research, yet the evidentiary meaning of an “advantage” claim remains unsettled. Drug discovery contains heterogeneous scientific decisions, data structures, computational abstractions, validation standards, and translational consequences. Consequently, improvement in circuit execution, molecular-energy estimation, sampling, classification, or candidate generation cannot by itself establish pharmaceutical usefulness. This Original Quantum–Classical Position Article examines how quantum methods should be matched to problems they can credibly solve rather than evaluated through a single performance measure. It develops a proposed Quantum–Classical Credibility Map that links pharmaceutical problem specification, task selection, algorithmic assumptions, hardware conditions, data and encoding requirements, hybrid workflow design, comparator quality, uncertainty, and downstream validation. The synthesis distinguishes computational feasibility from practical advantage, scientific utility, and pharmaceutical value. It further separates electronic-structure calculations, reaction-mechanism analysis, molecular generation, property prediction, and quantum-assisted optimization according to their outputs, resource dependencies, and validation routes. The central proposition is that credibility is conjunctive: a claim cannot be stronger than the least-supported necessary connection between the pharmaceutical decision, computational subproblem, quantum method, classical workflow, and empirical evidence. The proposed framework does not establish quantum advantage, clinical utility, regulatory acceptance, or deployment readiness. Its value lies in organizing research questions, exposing hidden assumptions, improving quantum–classical comparisons, and defining conditions under which a pharmaceutical application should be investigated, reformulated, monitored, or deferred. Prospective benchmarking, independent replication, complete resource accounting, and experimentally connected evaluation are required before the framework itself or the applications organized through it can be considered validated.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
                <kwd>Quantum computing</kwd>
                <kwd>Drug discovery</kwd>
                <kwd>Hybrid quantum–classical methods</kwd>
                <kwd>Quantum machine learning</kwd>
                <kwd>Computational chemistry</kwd>
                <kwd>Molecular representation</kwd>
              </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>