Isomorphic Labs unveils IsoDDE drug-discovery engine, hailed as 'an AlphaFold 4' — but proprietary
On 10 Feb 2026 DeepMind spin-off Isomorphic Labs released a 27-page technical report on IsoDDE, a proprietary drug-discovery engine that outperforms AlphaFold 3-era tools and Boltz-2 on protein–ligand binding, affinity and antibody-structure prediction; outside scientists called it "on the scale of an AlphaFold 4" but lamented the lack of details.
Key facts
- Announced 2026-02-10 via a 27-page technical report; model not released
- Beats Boltz-2 and physics-based methods at binding-affinity prediction; state of the art on antibody–target interactions; generalises to molecules unlike its training data
- Mohammed AlQuraishi: 'a major advance, on the scale of an AlphaFold4... The problem is that we know nothing of the details.'
Science result
- Field
- biology / drug discovery / structural biology
- Problem
- Predicting protein–ligand binding poses and affinities and antibody–antigen structures
- Result
- Proprietary engine reported to beat Boltz-2 and physics-based methods on binding-affinity prediction and reach state of the art on antibody–target structures, generalising to molecules unlike its training data.
- AI system
- IsoDDE
- Human role
- Human-designed system; results reported by the developer
- Verification
- Company technical report only; not peer-reviewed, model not released
- Status
- pending
- Why surprising
- Mohammed AlQuraishi called it 'a major advance, on the scale of an AlphaFold4' while noting 'we know nothing of the details'.
What happened
Isomorphic Labs, led by Demis Hassabis, described IsoDDE, a successor-class system to AlphaFold 3 aimed at drug discovery, in a technical report without releasing code or weights.
Why it matters
Shows AI structural biology continuing to advance fast, but also a shift from DeepMind's open-science AlphaFold tradition toward proprietary commercial models.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
- 2026-09-29: added science block (science & math tab)
- 2026-09-29: see 2026-05-12-isomorphic-labs-series-b for the $2.1B Series B and the slipped clinical-trial timeline
Related events
- Demis Hassabis steps aside as Google DeepMind CEO; Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over, Jeff Dean leaves ★★★★
- Baker lab designs antibodies from scratch with atomic accuracy using RFdiffusion ★★★
- Isomorphic Labs raises $2.1B Series B; first human trials of its AI-designed drugs slip to end-2026 ★★★
Sources (2)
- pressNature: 'An AlphaFold 4' — scientists marvel at DeepMind drug spin-off's exclusive new AI
- pressScientific American (reprint of Nature news)
id: 2026-02-10-isomorphic-isodde · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline