{"id":8202,"date":"2025-10-01T00:41:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/baidu-backed-drug-discovery-start-up-biomap-challenges-googles-alphafold\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T00:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:41:28","slug":"baidu-backed-drug-discovery-start-up-biomap-challenges-googles-alphafold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/baidu-backed-drug-discovery-start-up-biomap-challenges-googles-alphafold\/","title":{"rendered":"Baidu-backed drug discovery start-up Biomap challenges Google\u2019s AlphaFold"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">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.<\/p>\n<div data-qa=\"InlineAdSlot-Container\" class=\"css-zl1inp e11v3ui14\">\n<div class=\"e11v3ui10 e11v3ui13 css-1evd7i0 e1flwkbl0\" data-qa=\"AdSlot-Container\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Multinational pharmaceutical companies were seeing a &ldquo;reverse&rdquo; 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.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">&ldquo;There&rsquo;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,&rdquo; said Wei. However, AlphaFold had &ldquo;greater academic influence&rdquo;, he added.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Developed by London-based DeepMind &ndash; owned by Google&rsquo;s parent company, Alphabet &ndash; AlphaFold is widely considered the global leader in using AI to analyse and predict molecular structures and interactions to discover new therapies.<\/p>\n<div datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1xdhyk6 ec74h0k0\" readability=\"12.057251908397\">Biomap is part of a growing cohort of Chinese firms, <span data-qa=\"Component-Text\" class=\"css-0 ef9u0v00\">including start-ups<\/span> 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.<\/div>\n<div class=\"image-inline-container e1a5rv550 css-1llrc1m e1yqhwb40\" data-qa=\"Component-renderMap-StyledDiv\">\n<div class=\"image-inline caption e1fvabeq0 css-19sk4h4 ea9pn0s0\" data-qa=\"Component-Container\">\n<figure class=\"image-inline caption ea9pn0s1 css-1qeofuq e1gf69pb0\" data-qa=\"ArticleImage-ArticleImageContainer\">\n<div data-qa=\"ArticleImage-handleRenderImage-ImageContainer\" class=\"css-0 e1gf69pb3\"><\/div><figcaption data-qa=\"ArticleImage-DescriptionContainer\" class=\"css-1ixmelf e1gf69pb1\">Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong is a co-founder of Biomap. Photo: EPA-EFE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p><sub>Baidu-backed drug discovery start-up Biomap challenges Google&rsquo;s AlphaFold<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. Advertisement Multinational pharmaceutical companies were seeing a &ldquo;reverse&rdquo; in the technological gap between Biomap and AlphaFold, Wei Liu, co-founder and CEO&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/baidu-backed-drug-discovery-start-up-biomap-challenges-googles-alphafold\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Baidu-backed drug discovery start-up Biomap challenges Google\u2019s AlphaFold&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}