Antibody developer Yumab partners with Japanese AI specialist Molcure

The collaboration brings together complementary expertise and technologies. MOLCURE has a decade of experience in AI-design of antibodies and has accumulated over a billion proprietary experimental data points, and YUMAB has more than thirty years of technical excellence and research in antibody discovery, engineering and manufacturing. 

YUMAB and MOLCURE share a common vision to push the boundaries of antibody discovery for difficult to drug protein classes that are of high therapeutic potential, such as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ion channels. These proteins are often challenging to screen with conventional methods, including animal immunization and display screening. In these physical screening systems, many factors can result in the target protein and/or antibodies not being expressed or not in pathophysiological conformations, causing a failure to identify potentially therapeutic antibodies. 

The YUMAB and MOLCURE collaboration on zero-shot AI technology is set to overcome the barriers of conventional screening methods for undruggable protein targets. Zero-shot AI technology enables the in silico de novo design of antibody sequences based on antigen sequences and/or target structures. This de novo design of antibodies, which does not require initial physical screening to identify starting points, will expand the types of targets that can be drugged and increase the diversity of antibody sequences for each target.

The Japanese company’s patented and validated AI platform is based on evolutionary molecular engineering, next-generation sequencing (NGS), and laboratory automation technologies. The technology enables to design ten times superior molecules, and the number of new molecules generated is more than twenty times compared with conventional methods. 

Under the collaboration, MOLCURE will use its proprietary platform to design antibody sequences and will also apply both physics-based methods, such as molecular dynamics, and additional AI algorithms for accuracy improvement. YUMAB then will express the designed antibody sequences and perform experimental measurements. The data generated will be incorporated into the AI for further iteration and optimisation of antibody design. 

“We’re excited about the progress we have made in our collaboration with MOLCURE and their AI technology,” said Dr. Thomas Schirrmann, CEO, YUMAB. “Once zero-shot AI technology is fully developed, it will give clients the opportunity to explore a much larger and more diverse sequence space than can be physically generated in conventional screening, which will translate into better antibodies for more targets, and significant savings in time and money.”