- Person
- David Baker
- Lived
- b. 1962
- Field
- Protein design
- From
- American
The story
David Baker, born in Seattle in 1962 into a Jewish family, spent decades learning how proteins fold. His software, Rosetta, began as a way to predict a protein’s shape from its sequence of amino acids. Baker then ran it in reverse, designing sequences for shapes that had never existed. In 2003 his group made Top7, the first protein with a fold unknown in nature. In 2024 he received half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design.
At the Institute for Protein Design, which Baker founded and directs at the University of Washington, scientists learned to design proteins that assemble themselves into tiny particles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers led by Neil King and David Veesler used such designed particles to display 60 copies of the part of the coronavirus spike protein that the most potent antibodies target. The aim was a second-generation vaccine that would be safe, effective at low doses, simple to manufacture and stable without deep freezing.
The South Korean company SK bioscience developed the vaccine with support from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and an adjuvant from GlaxoSmithKline. In a Phase 3 trial of 4,037 adults it produced roughly three times more neutralising antibodies than the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and 98 percent of recipients achieved a strong antibody response. In June 2022 South Korea approved it as SKYCovione. It was later approved in the United Kingdom and given Emergency Use Listing by the World Health Organization.
The University of Washington licensed the technology royalty-free for the duration of the pandemic so that it could reach people in countries with limited resources. The vaccine showed that proteins designed on a computer could become real medicines, a path the Nobel committee said could lead to more rapid development of vaccines, targeted pharmaceuticals and new materials.
Baker has made many of his group’s design tools freely available to researchers, and laboratories around the world now use computational design to create candidate vaccines, enzymes, sensors and medicines.
Why it matters
Computer-designed proteins like those in SKYCovione open a faster path to vaccines and medicines that are easier to make, store and deliver around the world.
About David Baker
Seattle biochemist who learned to design entirely new proteins by computer, opening a path to new vaccines, medicines and materials, including an approved COVID-19 vaccine. Nobel Prize 2024.
Sources
- COVID-19 vaccine with IPD nanoparticles wins full approval abroad UW Institute for Protein Design
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 NobelPrize.org
- David Baker (biochemist) Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.