This is the first company to be spun out of Baker Lab, the University of Washington research outfit overseen by pioneering computational biologist and recent Nobel Prize winner David Baker. His team’s work on generative protein design using AI and other means has been foundational in the fast-evolving industry, and Archon is taking a specific aspect of it to market.

One shortcoming of antibody treatments (and research into effective treatments) is that, like all molecular biology, the process depends a bit on chance. It’s difficult to control how much an antibody or protein actually binds to its target on a cell or other surface.