Institute led by UW Nobel winner uses AI to build molecular scissors targeting disease proteins

Anqi Chen, left, and Hojae Choi, are lead authors on two Nature papers from UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design. (IPD Photos) Researchers at UW Medicine’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD) have created new proteins that act like molecular scissors, chopping up targets associated with Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The scientists are using sophisticated AI models developed at IPD to design proteins called proteases — a class