Protein Design Competition
Design a new cancer drug
In this competition, you can test your skills as a protein designer by designing a binding protein to the extracellular domain of EGFR, a cancer-associated drug target. The best designs will be experimentally validated in our automated wet lab and all results will be open-sourced.
Competition structure
Submission process
Every protein designer can submit up to 10 designs.
Designs must adhere to the following criteria:
• Only natural amino acids
• Max 200 amino acids in length
• Single chain
• At least 10 amino acid edit distance from known binders
Evaluation criteria
Designs will be ranked based on PAE_interaction with AF2 as described here.
The top 100 designs will be selected for experimental testing.
Additional designs will be chosen for their novelty, creativity in the design process or other interesting factors.
Lab evaluation
Selected designs will be tested in our Affinity Characterization workflow which includes protein expression and a high-quality kinetics assay to determine the binding affinity of the protein to the target.
You can find more information in our RFdiffusion case study
Prizes
Top 5 designers with the best binding affinity (= lowest KD value) will receive 10 free assays each to run at Adaptyv Bio for their own protein design campaigns.
Top 10 designers will additionally receive an Adaptyv Bio Merch Pack
Timeline
Submission deadline: August 18, 2024.
Results announcement: September 18, 2024
Make a submission
🚧 Submissions are now closed
The submission deadline for this competition has passed. Thank you for your interest!
We are currently synthesizing the proteins in our lab for experimental validation. You can follow the progress on our Foundry Platform. Final results will be announced on September 18, 2024.
Want to receive updates?
VIRTUAL LEADERBOARD
Best designs based on iPAE prediction scores*
*The AF2 iPAE prediction score is frequently utilized as an indicator for assessing the potential of a protein to effectively bind to a target. In this competition, we use it as a computational filter to select designs that will be tested in the lab. However, it's important to note that a low iPAE score does not necessarily correlate with a low KD (dissociation constant), which is why experimental testing remains crucial. The designs highlighted on this virtual leaderboard are selected based on the computational prediction, but the final leaderboard will depend on lab-based experimental results.
Want to get started designing proteins? Check out some protein design tools