Drug-like antibodies with low immunogenicity in human panels designed with Latent-X2

TL;DR

Latent-X2 is a novel generative model that designs drug-like, low-immunogenicity antibodies and other molecules with high affinity, demonstrating potential for rapid therapeutic development without extensive filtering.

Contribution

Introduces Latent-X2, a zero-shot generative model capable of designing drug-like, low-immunogenicity antibodies and macrocyclic peptides with high affinity and developability.

Findings

Successfully generated antibodies against 9 of 18 targets with high affinity.

First demonstration of low immunogenicity in AI-designed antibodies.

Generated macrocyclic peptides competitive with large-scale screens.

Abstract

Drug discovery has long sought computational systems capable of designing drug-like molecules directly: developable and non-immunogenic from the start. Here we introduce Latent-X2, a frontier generative model that achieves this goal through zero-shot design of antibodies with strong binding affinities, drug-like properties, and, for the first time for any de novo generated antibody, confirmed low immunogenicity in human donor panels. Latent-X2 is an all-atom model conditioned on target structure, epitope specification, and optional antibody framework, jointly generating sequences and structures while modelling the bound complex. Testing only 4 to 24 designs per target in each modality, we successfully generated VHH and scFv antibodies against 9 of 18 evaluated targets, achieving a 50% target-level success rate with picomolar to nanomolar binding affinities. Designed molecules exhibit developability profiles that match or exceed those of approved antibody therapeutics, including expression yield, aggregation propensity, polyreactivity, hydrophobicity, and thermal stability, without optimization, filtering, or selection. In the first immunogenicity assessment of any AI-generated antibody, representative de novo VHH binders targeting TNFL9 exhibit both potent target engagement and low immunogenicity across T-cell proliferation and cytokine release assays. The model generalizes beyond antibodies: against K-Ras, long considered undruggable, we generated macrocyclic peptide binders competitive with trillion-scale mRNA display screens. These properties emerge directly from the model, demonstrating the therapeutic viability of zero-shot molecular design, now available without AI infrastructure or coding expertise at https://platform.latentlabs.com.