Claude-designed antibody strips IgE off mast cells, outperforming Xolair
IgE disruptor for food allergy with Claude-enabled antibody design[pdf]
Food allergy affects 220–250 million people, and omalizumab (Xolair) only neutralizes free IgE while receptor-bound IgE lingers for weeks. Divergence Labs ran an agentic design campaign with Claude, steering it toward a biparatopic antibody: one arm displaces IgE from FcεRI, the other anchors to receptor-bound IgE. Of 91 disruptor designs, 20 showed activity and three removed more IgE than omalizumab at therapeutic concentrations; de novo anchor arms bound IgE with affinities of 3.4–235 nM.
The medicine with the greatest potential for patients with food allergy would therefore not only neutralize free IgE but also remove the IgE already bound to effector cells.