Nature: Large blind benchmark of AI-designed antibodies shows promise and ceiling

ferruz_noelia · x · 2026-08-22

Scale: First large blind benchmark involving 29 independent labs testing 511 AI-designed antibody binders, designed with zero knowledge of real target structures.
Results: A handful of AI-designed antibodies achieved sub-100pM affinity in wet-lab tests, rivaling approved therapeutics.
Limitations: Most methods failed to generalize past the targets they were tuned on, revealing a ceiling in current generalization capabilities.
Significance: Published in Nature Biotechnology, this prospective benchmark anchored to experimental data highlights both the promise and the current limits of computational antibody discovery.

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