From "Screening" to "Design": How AI Is Reshaping Antibody Drug R&D — "AI × Frontier Protein Technologies" Summit Successfully Held

At this summit, Li Raoyi, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Clickmab, presented a keynote on "AI-Driven De Novo Antibody Design for Specific Epitopes." In recent years, industry interest in AI antibody R&D has continued to grow. Yet in real projects, a persistent challenge remains: R&D teams often do not lack antibodies — they lack antibodies that meet specific functional requirements. Especially in ADC, bispecific, and CAR-T domains, what truly determines project value is not simple binding ability, but specific functional epitopes, precise mechanisms of action, and developability characteristics. Antibody R&D is undergoing an important transition: from "antibody screening (Discovery)" to "antibody design (Design)." To address this trend, Clickmab has built its proprietary Click.mAb. multi-agent AI antibody design platform. The platform is built on a million-scale proprietary antibody pairing database, integrating generative AI models, structure prediction, epitope analysis, and directed evolution to form a complete R&D system covering design, optimization, and validation — enabling de novo antibody design against target epitopes. Compared to traditional screening, Click.mAb focuses on function-oriented design. R&D teams no longer simply search for antibodies that "can bind," but design antibodies that "can achieve the target function" around specific mechanisms of action.

In the presentation, Clickmab shared several representative project cases, covering 0-to-1 discovery of starting molecules and 1-to-100 directed evolution anchored to biological function — with focused mutant recommendations and targeted optimization as core advantages, validating platform capabilities across multiple projects.

For innovative drug development, what truly matters is not obtaining more candidate molecules, but obtaining the right ones faster. As Li Raoyi shared: "What we aim to do is not use whatever we screen — but design whatever we need."

If AI is transforming antibody design, the success of challenging target development also requires high-quality experimental platforms and supply-chain collaboration. At this summit, industry experts shared latest practices from different perspectives.

Sanyou Bio · VP Hailiang Zheng
Introduced the AI-STAL and SAI-DA intelligent R&D platforms, showing how an "algorithm prediction—experimental validation—data feedback" closed loop drives AI from an assistive tool to a full R&D engine.

Kactus Biosystems · VP of Market Strategy Li Yunyan
Focused on complex proteins, sharing solutions for multi-pass transmembrane proteins, TCR-CD3 complexes, and Nanodisc display technology. She noted that complex-target capabilities are becoming a key competitive differentiator as ADCs and TCEs advance.

Hentenovo Bio · SVP Dr. Liu Songkai
Shared insights on developability research, demonstrating how sequence optimization, process development, and formulation studies improve candidate molecule stability and manufacturability.

KangKang Bio · CEO Dr. Jiang Weidong
Introduced the latest advances in Prodrug technology, sharing how innovative design improves the balance between efficacy and safety for complex disease treatment.

From AI design to protein tools, from experimental validation to CMC development, innovations across different stages together form a new ecosystem for innovative drug R&D.

As one of the co-organizers, Clickmab firmly believes that the true value of AI lies not in replacing scientists, but in helping scientists break through the boundaries of traditional R&D. The goal of Click.mAb. is not merely to generate antibody sequences, but to help partners conduct precise molecular design around specific biological questions, enabling antibody R&D to transition from experience-driven to design-driven. Going forward, Clickmab will continue to partner with Sanyou Bio, Kactus Biosystems, and more industry collaborators to advance the deep integration of AI and experimental science, jointly explore pathways to breakthrough challenging targets, and accelerate the discovery and translation of next-generation innovative therapeutics.