Proteina Signs MOU with US Twist for Large-Scale Validation in AI Drug Development

AI drug development company Proteina announced on August 27 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US-listed biotechnology company Twist Bioscience (hereinafter referred to as Twist) to collaborate in the field of AI antibody drug development.

Twist is a publicly traded biotechnology company headquartered in California, USA, equipped with synthesis, expression, and testing infrastructure that is essential for implementing large-scale AI-designed protein and antibody sequences as candidate substances. The company provides large-scale experimental validation services for AI design verification to global partners.

Recently, with the open-source release of models with AlphaFold3-level performance, the standards in AI drug development models have been raised across the industry. In this context, the ability to rapidly implement and validate a large number of AI-generated candidate molecules has become a core competitive advantage.

In 2024, Proteina advanced its antibody design AI models and large-scale experimental validation and data production platforms through a KRW 15 billion national R&D project funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, and in 2025, through a KRW 47 billion national project supported by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Based on these enhancements, Proteina is conducting joint development with other drug development companies. The company has established a closed-loop 'Lab-in-the-loop' system, where candidate molecules designed by AI are verified through large-scale experiments, and the resulting data is fed back for further AI training.

Proteina plans to gradually introduce full automation to its data production process to transform the rising demand for experimental validation, driven by the expansion of AI drug development, into a new revenue stream. The company aims to expand its current monthly production capacity of antigen-antibody interaction data from 40,000 to 1 million by 2028, a 25-fold increase.

The company intends to both expand large-scale candidate molecule validation into a new source of revenue and accelerate the development speed of its own and jointly developed pipelines. By linking Twist's large-scale synthesis and expression capabilities with Proteina's experimental validation and data production strengths, the process of implementing and verifying AI-designed candidate molecules will become more efficient.

Tae-Young Yoon, CEO of Proteina, said, "This MOU is significant in that it connects Twist's world-class gene (DNA) synthesis technology with Proteina's large-scale wet-lab experimental validation expertise," adding, "We will work toward producing a concrete form of collaboration by the end of the year."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.