There has been a recent surge in proteins developed by AI that will eventually be used in the treatment of everything from snakebites to cancer. What would normally take decades for a scientist to create – a custom-made protein for a particular disease – can now be done in seconds. A new way to combat the growing crisis caused by antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

By using AI in this way, Australian science has now joined countries like the US and China in having developed AI platforms capable of rapidly generating thousands of ready-to-use proteins, paving the way for faster, more affordable drug development and diagnostics that could transform biomedical research and patient care. According to Dr Grinter and Associate Professor Knott, the AI Protein Design Platform used in this work is the first in Australia that models the work done by Nobel Prize winner David Baker in developing an end-to-end approach that could create a wide range of proteins.

These proteins are now being developed as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors, with many other applications yet to be tested, Associate Professor Knott said. Daniel Fox, the PhD student who performed most of the experimental work for the study, said the AI Protein Design Platform used AI-driven protein design tools that are freely available for scientists everywhere. It’s important to democratize protein design so that the whole world has the ability to leverage these tools,he said.

Using these tools and those we are developing in-house, we can engineer proteins to bind a specific target site or ligand, as inhibitors, agonists or antagonists, or engineered enzymes with improved activity and stability. According to Dr Grinter, currently proteins used in the treatment of diseases like cancer or infections are derived from nature and repurposed through rational design or in vitro evolution and selection. These new methods in deep learning enable efficient de novo design of proteins with specific characteristics and functions, lowering the cost and accelerating the development of novel protein binders and engineered enzymes.

Source: https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2025-articles/australians-join-elite-group-of-scientists-using-ai-to-create-man-made-proteins