Celebrating the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

On October 9th, 2024, David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their revolutionary work on computational protein design and protein structure prediction.

Their work has already had immense impact in the field of biochemistry, as covered in an accessible and informative article in Quanta Magazine, which features interviews with two of the Nobel Prize winners alongside other experts in the field, including Anastassis Perrakis: group leader within Oncode Accelerator’s Artificial Intelligence Platform, group leader and head of the division of Biochemistry at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, professor of Macromolecular Structures at the University of Utrecht, and Oncode Institute Investigator.

Professor Perrakis provided a comment on the awarding of the 2024 Nobel Prize: "The work that received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has completely transformed the way we approach questions about the mechanism of proteins to understand basic biology and design new drugs and therapeutics. The impact in cancer research is already starting to show, and I am confident that in the next few years we will see applications of protein design in - for example - making therapeutic antibodies for specific (neo)antigens, and applications of protein structure prediction to better understand mutations that lead to cancer or result in drug resistance. And, of course, I anticipate a boost in computer-aided drug development."

For a deeper dive into the work of Professor Perrakis and his team, including Ida de Vries, Robbie P. Joosten, Daniel Álvarez Salmoral, Razvan Borza & Maarten Hekkelman, we refer you to: 

• The tools that they have developed for enriching AlphaFold models with ligands and cofactors: https://alphafill.eu/
• A first public view of their brand-new server for analysing AlphaFold 3 models, a development supported by PhD research on Artificial Intelligence within the Oncode Accelerator program: https://alpha-bridge.eu/