Baidu-backed drug discovery start-up Biomap challenges Google’s AlphaFold
Biomap, a biotechnology start-up co-established by Baidu founder Robin Li Yanhong and backed by the Hong Kong government, says it has surpassed Alphabet subsidiary AlphaFold in commercialising artificial intelligence foundation models for drug discovery.
Multinational pharmaceutical companies were seeing a “reverse” in the technological gap between Biomap and AlphaFold, Wei Liu, co-founder and CEO of Biomap and former CEO of Baidu Ventures, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
“There’s no absolute winner in AI benchmark tests, but in terms of commercialisation and projects developed based on our models, I think we are ahead of AlphaFold,” said Wei. However, AlphaFold had “greater academic influence”, he added.
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Developed by London-based DeepMind – owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet – AlphaFold is widely considered the global leader in using AI to analyse and predict molecular structures and interactions to discover new therapies.
Biomap is part of a growing cohort of Chinese firms, including start-ups and major tech companies like TikTok owner ByteDance, that are challenging AlphaFold in the rapidly evolving field. ByteDance has developed Protenix, a molecular structure prediction model.
Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong is a co-founder of Biomap. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong is a co-founder of Biomap. Photo: EPA-EFE>
Biomap reported last year that its xTrimo models demonstrated greater accuracy than AlphaFold 3 in determining interactions between 70 antibodies and 44 single-domain antibodies with their targets.
Established in 2020, Biomap secured funding from the government-owned Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) in June last year.
The partnership sought to enhance the city’s biotech ecosystem through an accelerator programme called BioMap InnoHub, which incubated more than 10 projects and two companies, with the goal of expanding to more than 50 projects and 20 companies by 2030, Liu said at an event co-hosted by the HKIC on Monday.
On Monday, Biomap also announced the co-founding of a new company in Hong Kong focused on bringing new drugs to market, furthering its commercialisation efforts.
BioGend Science – co-established with Legend Capital, a venture capital subsidiary of Lenovo Group’s parent Legend Holdings – would develop several drug pipelines using Biomap’s AI platform and Hong Kong’s research and clinical resources, Liu said in a speech.
