Nobel Laureate David Baker will lead a new University of Washington initiative that’s launching with $7 million to develop designer enzymes and proteins to solve challenges in medicine, technology and sustainability.
The funding comes from the Washington Research Foundation (WRF), a nonprofit organization based in Seattle that supports research and entrepreneurship in the state. WRF granted nearly $200,000 last year to the UW Institute for Protein Design (IPD), which Baker leads, to create a plan for the new program.
The goal of the four-year initiative is to accelerate IPD’s work by educating new scientists, translating discoveries into commercially viable tools and supporting the launch of startups.
Baker received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using AI and machine learning to create never-before-seen proteins. He is the director of the IPD and a UW biochemistry professor.
Enzymes, which are a category of proteins, have key applications in global industries such as pharma, agriculture, energy and manufacturing. They’re able to orchestrate the transformation of molecules and dramatically speed up essential chemical reactions.
“With AI, we can now design these molecules from scratch, tailored precisely to the task at hand,” Baker said in a statement. “This grant from WRF will help us push this technology further and train a new generation of scientists to bring designed enzymes from the computer to the lab to the market.”
IPD has already launched more than 10 startups, including PvP Biologics, acquired by Takeda; Icosavax, acquired by AstraZeneca; A-Alpha Bio; and Neoleukin Therapeutics.
The project will start receiving grant dollars from the Washington Research Foundation around June of this year. Further support is coming from the philanthropist and former Citibank CEO Sanford Weill; the Fund for Science and Technology, which is part of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s philanthropies; and the IPD Breakthrough Fund. The UW is providing IPD with additional office and lab space in Seattle’s South Lake Union as part of the initiative.
The grant comes from the foundation’s BioInnovation Grants program, which launched last year and has funded three additional efforts to advance Washington state’s life sciences sector. The program has committed more than $32 million across five institutions.
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