Galixir’s rapid PROTAC design; plus Engimmune’s TCR platform and more

Galixir Technologies Ltd. and collaborators from  Sun Yat-sen University developed a model, dubbed PROTAC-RL, to accelerate rational design of proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) using deep learning and molecular simulations. As proof of concept, the authors of the Nature Machine Intelligence paper synthesized six BRD4-targeting PROTACs in 49 days, with the lead candidate showing anti-proliferative activity and a favorable PK profile in mice.

Researchers from ETH Zurich including Engimmune Therapeutics AG co-founders Rodrigo Vazquez-Lombardi and Sai Reddy revealed in Immunity a T cell receptor (TCR) engineering method, dubbed TCR-Engine, that uses CRISPR genome editing, deep sequencing, computational selection and functional screening to validate the activity and specificity of TCRs using a human T cell platform. The authors applied the method to engineer TCR variants targeting the tumor antigen MAGEA3...