{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion","date":"2025-11-05","date_precision":"month","short_title":"Baker lab designs antibodies from scratch with atomic accuracy using RFdiffusion","deck":null,"takeaway":"In Nature (Nov 2025) the Baker lab reported de novo design of VHH nanobodies, scFvs and full antibodies against chosen epitopes.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Atomically accurate de novo design of antibodies with RFdiffusion (Nature)","url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09721-5","type":"paper","group":"primary","domain":"nature.com"},{"n":2,"title":"Chai-2 zero-shot antibody design (bioRxiv)","url":"https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.05.663018v1","type":"paper","group":"primary","domain":"biorxiv.org"},{"n":3,"title":"GeekWire: Nobel winner's lab notches AI-designed antibodies that hit their targets","url":"https://www.geekwire.com/2025/nobel-winners-lab-notches-another-breakthrough-ai-designed-antibodies-that-hit-their-targets/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"geekwire.com"}],"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["University of Washington Institute for Protein Design"],"title":"Baker lab designs antibodies from scratch with atomic accuracy using RFdiffusion","summary":"In Nature (Nov 2025) the Baker lab reported de novo design of VHH nanobodies, scFvs and full antibodies against chosen epitopes. Cryo-EM confirmed atomically accurate binding poses and CDR loops for influenza haemagglutinin and C. difficile toxin B. Chai Discovery's Chai-2 separately reported ~16% hit rates for zero-shot antibody design.","key_facts":["Targets included influenza HA and C. difficile toxin TcdB; cryo-EM matched designs at atomic level","Chai-2 (bioRxiv, Jul 2025): ~16% de novo antibody hit rate; binders for ~50% of 52 targets with ≤20 designs each (preprint)"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["biology","antibodies","protein-design"],"science":{"field":"biology","subfield":"antibody engineering","problem":"Designing antibodies to a chosen epitope computationally, without immunisation or library screening","result":"Epitope-specific antibodies designed de novo, with cryo-EM-validated atomic accuracy.","open_since":"","ai_system":["RFdiffusion (antibody-tuned)","Chai-2"],"human_role":"Human-led with AI tools","verification":{"key":"peer-review","label":"Peer-reviewed","text":"Peer-reviewed in Nature (Baker); preprint (Chai-2); lab-validated"},"status":"confirmed","shock":""},"body_md":"## What happened\n\nAfter years of designing small binders, AI protein design reached antibodies, the most important class of biologic drugs.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nComputational antibody design could replace months of animal immunisation and library screening in drug discovery.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-02-10-isomorphic-isodde","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-10-isomorphic-isodde/","date":"2026-02-10","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Isomorphic Labs unveils IsoDDE drug-discovery engine, hailed as 'an AlphaFold 4'","deck":"But proprietary","takeaway":"Shows AI structural biology continuing to advance fast, but also a shift from DeepMind's open-science AlphaFold tradition toward proprietary commercial models.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"pending","labels":["Event confirmed","Awaiting review"]},"sources":2,"official":0,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Isomorphic Labs","Google DeepMind"]},{"id":"2023-07-11-rfdiffusion-protein-design","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-07-11-rfdiffusion-protein-design/","date":"2023-07-11","date_precision":"day","short_title":"RFdiffusion: diffusion models design new proteins that work in the lab","deck":null,"takeaway":"It became the workhorse of AI protein design, underlying AI antivenoms, antibodies and enzymes.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["University of Washington Institute for Protein Design"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":null}