San Diego, CA – April 16, 2026 – Wellcome Leap (Leap), a U.S. nonprofit founded by the Wellcome Trust to accelerate breakthroughs in human health, today announced the outcome of its Quantum for Bio (Q4Bio) Supported Challenge Program. The $50 million initiative was designed to support the development of new algorithms (with $40 million in research funding) and test them through a rigorous, competitive challenge to determine whether quantum computing could deliver provable advantage for critical, classically intractable challenges in biology and healthcare. Up to $10 million in potential prizes was available.

Launched in 2023, Q4Bio set out to answer a fundamental question: What if we could develop new algorithms that deliver quantum advantage for health? At the time, the field was marked by significant promise, but limited evidence of practical application. Over the course of 30 months, the program brought together experts across quantum software, hardware, and biology as collaborative teams to identify high-impact biological use cases and co-develop the quantum solutions required to solve them. Finalist teams were led by Infleqtion, University of Nottingham, Harvard University, Stanford University, Algorithmiq, and the University of Oxford.

Two prize categories were defined: A $5 million grand prize for demonstrating quantum advantage over best-in-class classical baselines and a $2 million prize for each team that successfully demonstrated an experimental realization of their application on a quantum computer with more than 50 qubits, a program depth of O(10³–10⁴), and a clear trajectory to scale toward quantum advantage.

Today, Wellcome Leap has announced that Algorithmiq has successfully met the criteria for the $2 million prize.

The multidisciplinary team led by quantum software company Algorithmiq, with quantum computing support from IBM, and biological expertise from Cleveland Clinic, successfully demonstrated an experimental realization of their solution – identifying a scalable path to future quantum advantage. The team developed an end-to-end quantum-classical workflow to calculate excited-state properties of a photosensitizer drug relevant for photodynamic cancer therapy.

Importantly, the true impact of Q4Bio extends beyond the prize itself. Through rigorous testing of current capabilities, teams across the program delivered critical scientific contributions that establish a clear, evidence-based understanding of how quantum computing can be applied in human health.

“When we started the Wellcome Leap program, it wasn’t clear exactly how or where quantum computing could meaningfully impact biology,” said Shihan Sajeed, Program Director for Q4Bio. “Q4Bio was designed to create new solutions that would answer that question within real biological and hardware constraints. What we now have is a much clearer understanding of where quantum can create value, where it cannot, and what needs to happen next.”

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 12, 2026 – Wellcome Leap, a U.S. non-profit accelerating breakthroughs in human health, and Medicines360, a women’s health innovation organization, today announced a collaboration to accelerate breakthrough advances in maternal health technologies designed to improve outcomes for mothers and babies around the world. The partnership includes new blood biomarker-based tests and non-invasive retinal imaging technologies that are designed to accurately predict risk for common pregnancy complications associated with roughly half of all stillbirths.

Globally, more than two million pregnancies end in stillbirth every year.1 In the U.S., more than one in 150 births end in stillbirth – a burden disproportionately affecting families in low-income areas.2

“Before you finish this paragraph, another baby will be stillborn. Every 16 seconds, a mother, a family, grieves this loss. Women deserve clearer insights of their pregnancy health,” said Regina E. Dugan, CEO of Wellcome Leap. “By combining Wellcome Leap’s scientific breakthroughs with Medicines360’s global innovation and access model, we can deliver predictive tools to mothers around the world – before complications arise. Before it’s too late.”

This partnership will accelerate the scientific advances discovered in Wellcome Leap’s In Utero program – a $50 million initiative launched in 2022 to create scalable methods to measure, model, and predict gestational development in utero. The technologies developed during the program are critical for early stillbirth risk detection and include:

• The University of Cambridge’s discovery of new blood-based biomarkers of fetal growth restriction, gestational diabetes mellitus, and preeclampsia.
• The University of Edinburgh’s advances in retinal eye imaging technology, which is intended to detect vascular-related conditions like preeclampsia.

San Diego, CA – September 10, 2025 – Wellcome Leap, a U.S. non-profit, and Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates, today announced a $100 million partnership to accelerate women’s health research. The joint effort will focus on delivering breakthroughs in women’s health research in areas with some of the highest burdens of morbidity and mortality, such as cardiovascular health, autoimmune disease, and mental health.

Women experience health issues differently, disproportionately, and uniquely – yet funding remains inadequate. Despite living longer, women spend an average of nine years of their lives in poor health, which is 25 percent more compared to men1. Additionally, only 1 percent of global health research funding was allocated to women’s health conditions beyond cancer in 20201.

This new funding partnership will support the launch of two new women’s health programs kicking off in 2026, using Leap’s proven model for delivering breakthroughs. This also pushes Leap’s total investment in women’s health to $250 million, putting the organization one step closer to a bold goal of $1 billion in philanthropic capital dedicated to accelerating breakthroughs for under-researched, under-prioritized, and underfunded conditions that disproportionately impact women at every stage of life.

“Women’s health is chronically underfunded, chronically under-researched, and, as a result, not well understood. We need to look at this broken status quo through new eyes and stop tolerating women’s pain and suffering,” said Melinda French Gates, Philanthropist and Founder of Pivotal. “With Wellcome Leap’s proven model, we expect to see outcomes years – even decades – sooner than we would through other approaches. This is a unique chance for funders and partners to step up and be part of something truly revolutionary. Progress is ours if we’re willing to reach for it, and the results will touch the lives of women all over the world.”

With the support of Wellcome Trust and the leadership of CEO Regina E. Dugan, former Director of DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the first woman to lead the agency, Leap built the first-ever application of DARPA’s model for human health on a global scale.

“We need more breakthroughs, and we need them faster,” said Dugan. “I have seen how ambitious, emotionally invested teams with clear goals can overcome obstacles, collapse timelines, and deliver solutions once thought impossible. Together with Melinda and the team at Pivotal, we share a determination to change the future for women. Because breakthroughs in women’s health are not a matter of chance – they are a matter of choice. And it’s time. Women have waited long enough.”