Proteinea announces release of 'Ankh' the world's top performing protein language model, a major step forward for A.I based protein engineering and drug development

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Jan 17, 2023, 13:30 ET

NEWTON, Mass., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Proteinea, a biotech startup pioneering computational protein engineering technologies, announces today the open-source release of Ankh; the world's top performing protein language model. Ankh is developed by Proteinea in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich and Columbia University. It is sponsored by Google via Google Research Innovator and Google TPU Cloud Research Credit Programs.

Protein language models are the basis of A.I/Deep learning based protein engineering and drug design. Ankh is the first general-purpose protein language model trained on Google's TPU v4 that exceeds the performance of the current world best protein language models, in a representative poll of structure and function benchmarks, with less than 10% of the computational power. Ankh has outperformed leading models in the field in a variety of protein structure, function, and generation-related tasks.

The release of Ankh marks an unprecedented moment in the history of protein engineering using AI. It will allow researchers and institutions to revolutionize their protein engineering efforts, improving overall functionality and resource efficiency. Ankh will also be the first state-of-the-art protein language model with dramatically increased accessibility due to the reduced computational resources required to run the model, and its open-sourced research usage.

Proteinea retains full commercial usage rights for Ankh and is already capitalizing on the model, using it in the novel protein engineering platform. Proteinea has achieved great internal success developing high-value protein-based products, completing several successful case studies in using its computational pipelines, fueled by Ankh to achieve great results in several applications around protein optimization and engineering.

About Proteinea

Proteinea is a global biotech startup specializing in protein engineering for biotherapeutics and other non-focus markets. Proteinea is using Ankh and its internally developed Protein Engineering Platform to partner with companies developing next-gen biotherapeutics, helping them access new development opportunities, minimize the risk of early research, and unlock performance limits never witnessed before. Proteinea is actively collaborating with drug developers, researchers, and academic institutions, and is seeking out further partnerships in the space.

Proteinea has its core facilities in Cairo, Egypt, and Boston, MA, with a presence in KAUST, Saudi Arabia. The company has around 40 employees forming a powerhouse team with a multidisciplinary background from biomedical engineering, to AI/Deep learning, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and more.

www.proteinea.com

SOURCE Proteinea