Dent: Chai-2 hits nearly 20% wet-lab antibody binding success
Jack Dent · No Priors Ep. 121 | With Chai Discovery Co-Founders Jack Dent and Joshua Meier · Jul 3, 2025 · at 7:15
Jack Dent, co-founder of Chai Discovery, discusses the wet-lab performance results of their generative antibody model Chai-2.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We have about a two week validation cycle in the lab, and two weeks later, we see that roughly close to 20% of these antibodies actually bind their targets in the intended way.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jack Dent
Dent: Humans will engineer molecules with atomic precision within a few years
“Over the next few years, we are going to have the ability as a human race to engineer molecules with atomic precision.”
Dent: AI will unlock new molecule classes and cure previously incurable diseases
“The idea that in the next five, 10 years that there are going to be. Entire new class of molecules that we're going to be able to discover and entire new targets that we're going to unlock and time markets that we can open up and therapeutics that we can get t…”
Dent: Models will generate entire drug candidates in just 20 attempts
“The fact that we can get antibody hits in just 20 attempts, there's no reason that, that we couldn't generate intra drug candidates in that same number of attempts.”
Dent: Chai's models achieve structure error below width of one atom
“They reason quite literally by placing individual atoms in, in three D space. And often they're getting the resolution of these structures, the error down to less than the width of one atom. When we look at the error across the entire structure.”
Dent: Chai achieved 70% success rate on mini protein binder designs
“I think if you see our mini protein results, we are, I think, close to 70% on those with picomolar affinities, like really, really tight binders for every single target that we tested. So all five targets we tested worked, and 70% of the designs that we ordere…”
Dent: Chai generated cross-species binding antibodies testing only 14 sequences
“We ordered actually only 14 sequences to the lab. And I think four of those were histohumans. One of those was a hit to the Sino. One of them was actually overlapped and hit both. That one now allows us to move forward with that program and gives us a whole am…”