The Protein Engineering Department is glad to share that it got 🥇 position on the Nipah Binder Competition tied with another competitor. Moreover, 2 out of the 4 employees in Nostrum who worked on the Competition ranked among the top 10 from all the Tournament players.
The tournament aimed at designing a protein capable of neutralizing the glycoprotein of the Nipah virus, a pathogen with an up to 75% mortality rate and high pandemic potential, currently lacking effective treatments (showing the relevance of the competition, meaning there are no current binders for the competition target). Players had to submit a library of sequences (10 maximum) daily, with at least 10 residues different from any other submitted protein in the competition. Then, the sequences were ranked according to a score computed from the structural model obtained with Boltz predicted by the holders of the competition, called the ipSAE score (URL: https://github.com/DunbrackLab/IPSAE). The submission of sequences with the best ipSAE score from each player was the one used to rank against the other players.
Nostrum’s results in the tournament display that they can offer exquisite designs of protein binders for a given target promptly.
Link to the competition: https://proteinbase.com/competitions/adaptyv-nipah-competition
