AI-Designed Intrabodies Offer New Approach to Treating Neurodegenerative Diseases
A research team has created a new computational approach for designing intrabodies—tiny antibody fragments engineered to penetrate cells and neutralize disease-related proteins that traditional antibodies cannot reach.
Antibodies are typically too large to enter cells, limiting their use against intracellular targets. Intrabodies address this by being engineered from existing antibody scaffolds but with sequences optimized to fold correctly within the cellular environment.
The new AI method allows researchers to predict which antibody sequences will remain stable and functional after being expressed inside cells. This capability could accelerate the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, where key disease-driving proteins accumulate within neurons.
The approach may also open doors for targeting proteins previously considered undruggable, since many disease mechanisms involve intracellular processes that have been difficult to address with conventional therapeutic molecules.