---
id: "2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2025-11-05"
date_precision: month
category: science
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Result confirmed]
verification: Peer-reviewed
sources: 3
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-05-ai-designed-antibodies-rfdiffusion/

# Baker lab designs antibodies from scratch with atomic accuracy using RFdiffusion

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)

## What happened

After years of designing small binders, AI protein design reached antibodies, the most important class of biologic drugs.

## Why it matters

Computational antibody design could replace months of animal immunisation and library screening in drug discovery.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Atomically accurate de novo design of antibodies with RFdiffusion (Nature)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09721-5) (nature.com, paper)
2. [Chai-2 zero-shot antibody design (bioRxiv)](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.05.663018v1) (biorxiv.org, paper)
3. [GeekWire: Nobel winner's lab notches AI-designed antibodies that hit their targets](https://www.geekwire.com/2025/nobel-winners-lab-notches-another-breakthrough-ai-designed-antibodies-that-hit-their-targets/) (geekwire.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-02-10: [Isomorphic Labs unveils IsoDDE drug-discovery engine, hailed as 'an AlphaFold 4'](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-10-isomorphic-isodde/index.md)
- 2023-07-11: [RFdiffusion: diffusion models design new proteins that work in the lab](https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-07-11-rfdiffusion-protein-design/index.md)