“The revolution in protein design is only just beginning”

Awarded the 15th Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine, researcher John Jumper, co-author of AlphaFold2, explains that this tool is a deep learning system that combines data from the Protein Data Bank with physical and geometric principles to efficiently predict protein structures. He points out that it is used both to study natural proteins and to design new ones, and that it stands as a pioneering example of how artificial intelligence can model the complexity of biological systems.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine has gone in this fifteenth edition to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Michael Jumper “for their contributions to the use of artificial intelligence for the accurate prediction of the three-dimensional structure of proteins,” in the words of the committee; an advance, it adds, with huge biomedical potential for the development of new treatments against multiple conditions.