Latent Labs launches web-based AI model to democratize protein design

About six months after he came from Stealth with $ 50 million in financing, Latent Labs has released a web-based AI model for programming biology.

The latent laboratory model has reached “state-of-the-art on different metrics” when testing the proteins it developed in a physical laboratory, according to Latent Labs CEO and founder Simon Kohl, a scientist who previously led the protein design team of DeepMind. State-of-the-art, or sota, is a term that is often used in the AI field that represents the best performance of the industry so far on a specific task.

“We have computational ways to assess how good the designs are,” he told WAN, adding that a high percentage of proteins that the model creates will be viable when they are tested in the lab.

With the fundamental biology model of the company, known as Latetx, academic institutions, Biotech startups and pharmaceutical companies enables new proteins to design directly in their browser with the help of a natural language.

Latetx goes beyond what has been found in nature, creating completely new molecular designs such as nanobodies and antibodies with precise atomic structures. This approach can help in developing new therapeutics much faster rare.

This ability to design completely new proteins distinguishes Latetx from the Alphafold, according to Kohl.

“Alpha fold is a model for prediction of protein structure. So it allows you to visualize existing structures, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t let you generate new proteins,” he said.

In contrast to AI-driven drug discovery companies such as XAIRA, recursion or DeepMind Isomorfe Laboratories, which focus on developing its own medicines, the operating model of latent laboratories includes the license of its model for use by external organizations.

“Not every company is able to build their own AI models, to have their own AI infrastructure and to have their own AI teams,” said Kohl.

Although Latetx is available for free, Kohl said that the company intends to ultimately charge for advanced functions and possibilities as they are introduced.

Other companies that offer open-sourced AI-fundamental models for drug discovery are Chai Discovery and Evolutionary Scale.

Latent Labs is supported by Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, the chief scientist of Google Jeff Dean, CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei and Eleven Labs CEO Mati Staniszewski.