Benefit Ledger · verified · Biology
EPFL-led BindCraft, published in Nature on 27 August 2025, used AlphaFold2 weights to design binders with 10–100 percent experimental success across diverse targets, including allergen, Cas9, toxin, and AAV applications.
Current score
+1.40
Major practical binder method (tier 3). Attribution split with AlphaFold2 (0.55). Nature plus open code. Realization includes functional assays beyond binding. Durable pipeline.
The open pipeline reported one-shot binder design without known sites in some cases and showed functional effects in patient-derived IgE samples, Cas9 modulation, toxin cytotoxicity reduction, and AAV retargeting. It depends on AlphaFold2 as a scoring/design prior, so credit is shared with that model family.
Open pipeline that optimized binders using AF2-based losses.
Pipeline and experimental campaign are new; AF2 weights are essential.
Attribution 0.5500 · Credit share 55.00000000000001% · EPFL
Provided weights used as the design/scoring engine.
BindCraft explicitly leverages AF2 weights; AF2 was not trained for this campaign.
Attribution 0.5000 · Credit share 35% · Google DeepMind
BindCraft produced experimentally successful binders across multiple target classes with reported functional follow-ups.
outcome · supported
primary sources
Nature · peer reviewed · 27 Aug 2025 · peer reviewed
Secondary domains: Medicine & Health
13 Sep 2026 · 0.00 → 1.40
Initial adjudicated seed score under methodology 0.1.