De novo design of epitope-specific antibodies via a structure-driven computational workflow.

De novo design of epitope-specific antibodies via a structure-driven computational workflow.

Publication date: Dec 10, 2025

Accurate modeling of antibody-antigen complex structures holds significant potential for advancing biomedical research and the design of therapeutic antibodies. Compared to general proteins, progress in antibody structure prediction and design has been slow, and antibody discovery is still based on time-consuming animal immunization or library screening methods. Here, we present tFold System, a high-throughput computational workflow that integrates antibody structure prediction (tFold-Ab), antibody-antigen complex modeling (tFold-Ag), structure-guided virtual screening, and de novo epitope-specific antibody design. Using this system, we de novo design monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against four therapeutically relevant antigens: influenza hemagglutinin (Flu A), PD-1, PD-L1, and SARS-CoV-2 RBD (SC2RBD). Experimental validation by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) following high-throughput screening via phage display shows the designed antibodies achieve nanomolar binding affinities and precise epitope targeting, demonstrating the efficiency of the integrated computational-experimental pipeline. Our results demonstrate that tFold System overcomes key limitations of existing methods by enabling rapid, high-throughput antibody discovery against user-defined epitopes.

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Concepts Keywords
Biomedical Antibodies
Influenza Antibody
Library Computational
Slow Design
Workflow Epitope
High
Modeling
Novo
Screening
Specific
Structure
System
Tfold
Throughput
Workflow

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH influenza
pathway REACTOME Reproduction
disease MESH included
drug DRUGBANK Coenzyme M
pathway REACTOME Adaptive Immune System
drug DRUGBANK Hexadecanal
drug DRUGBANK Spinosad
disease MESH CDR3
disease MESH dissociation
pathway KEGG Endocytosis
disease MESH infection
drug DRUGBANK Amino acids
drug DRUGBANK Saquinavir
disease MESH Chai
disease MESH malignancies
disease MESH CAR
disease MESH death
drug DRUGBANK Diethylstilbestrol
disease MESH Des
drug DRUGBANK Troleandomycin
pathway REACTOME Translation
disease MESH SARS CoV 2 infection
disease MESH OCD
drug DRUGBANK Pentaerythritol tetranitrate
drug DRUGBANK Flunarizine
drug DRUGBANK Albendazole

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