The way the world responded to creating vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to curb COVID-19 has been nothing short of a miracle. Since November 2019, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, technology has taken the centrestage in prevention and innovation and vaccine research.

Microsoft wanted to ensure that our next response to such a pandemic is even faster and that is why it awarded $5 million to the University of Washington School of Medicine's Institute of Protein Design. This fund will help the institute apply artificial intelligence (AI) in new ways to discover protein design. One outcome that they hope they shall achieve from this endeavour is that there will be a faster creation of therapeutics and vaccines in the next pandemic.

“In general, my feeling has been for three decades that AI generally, including machine learning, is a sleeping giant in healthcare, both in the biosciences as well as in clinical medicine,” Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, Eric Horvitz said. “And I think we’re seeing the waking of that sleeping giant now.”

The Institute of Protein Design focuses on the creation of de novo proteins, which are proteins made from scratch artificially, rather than being derived out of nature. if you can make things from scratch, then you really can put in all the properties you want, and leave out all the properties you don’t want. And then as machine learning gains steam in this area, and the capabilities grow and grow, I think it will be a real game-changer.” said David Baker, the director of the UW institute.

While announcing the partnership, the two institutes said that they will focus on areas where neural networks and large-scale computing can help in protein design, and collaborate to develop and manufacture these proteins for testing in the Institute of Protein Design's lab.  

The significance of this AI and protein design are beyond vaccines and pandemics, Baker said. “What I’d encourage everyone to think about is, now that we can design proteins with intent, what is possible?” he said. “I think we’re really just limited by our imaginations.”

Previously, the institute has designed an innovative nanoparticle vaccine candidate that produced virus-neutralising antibodies in mice at extremely high rates (10 times greater) than observed in COVID-19 recovered people.