AI-Enabled Antibody Discovery with Cradle

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AI-Enabled Antibody Discovery with Cradle

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Bayer has partnered with Cradle to deploy AI-enabled antibody discovery and optimization. Bayer's decision reflects a broader shift in the pharmaceutical industry: leading drug discovery organizations want AI that scales across portfolios, formats, and teams without requiring every scientist to become an ML expert. Cradle brings enterprise-grade, lab-in-the-loop AI into the hands of expert scientists working daily to design new molecules and treat diseases, helping reduce iterations while improving potency, developability, and manufacturability. Under the agreement, Cradle will provide Bayer's antibody scientists with full access to its scientific AI software platform supporting a lab-in-the-loop approach, streamlined design-test-learn cycles, and coordinated execution across laboratory and external partners. Following a successful proof of concept, Bayer selected Cradle as its best suited partner from among several vendors. The collaboration builds on the internal strengths of Bayer in antibody design, synthesis and machine learning, complementing with Cradle's deep expertise in scalable software development. Bayer and Cradle will also jointly work on a machine learning research project aimed at extending these capabilities even further. Cradle's mission is to make engineering biology easier, quicker and more cost-effective. Its enterprise-grade AI software platform currently serves 6 out of the top 25 global pharma companies and is used across over 50 R&D programs. With Cradle, scientists can engineer better proteins, faster and more successfully, speeding up the development cycle of new therapeutics and bio-based products such as antibodies, enzymes, and bio-based materials by up to 12x. Cradle is based in Amsterdam, Zurich, Switzerland and the United States with a team of machine learning and biotech research specialists with experience at Google, Novartis, Meta, Zymergen, Uber, Deepmind and Generate Biomedicines. In fiscal 2024, Bayer employed around 93,000 people and had sales of 46.6 billion euros with R&D expenses of 6.2 billion euros.