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David Baker

David Baker

Director, UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design; Professor of Biochemistry, University of Washington School of Medicine

Appears in 4 stories

Born: October 6, 1962, Seattle
Education: University of California, Berkeley, University of California, San Francisco

Last updated Nov 1, 2026

Stories

Researchers design protein scissors that cut specific targets

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Led the protease design effort; shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

University of Washington researchers designed protein-cutting enzymes from scratch. Each one snips a chosen protein at a chosen point. In one study, the enzymes cut a reporter protein inside cultured human cells, and one design cut full-length TDP-43, a protein tied to ALS.

Updated Oct 27

Blueprint published for RFdiffusion3 AI that designs proteins atom by atom

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Director of the Institute for Protein Design

An international team published the complete blueprint for RFdiffusion3, an artificial intelligence that designs proteins and nucleic acids atom by atom. The system, detailed in Science, invents enzymes from scratch that carry out their intended chemistry in real laboratory tests.

Updated Oct 20

IL-21 mimic converts transient KRAS inhibitor responses into durable remissions in pancreatic cancer

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As of September 2026: Designed the 21h10 IL-21 mimic

Pancreatic cancer ignores nearly every approved immunotherapy, and the new KRAS inhibitors shrink tumors only until resistance emerges. A study published online this week in Cell pairs those inhibitors with a designer mimic of the immune signal IL-21 — and in mice, the combination cleared pancreatic tumors and kept them clear for months.

Updated Sep 24

AI closes in on biology's last structural puzzles

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As of May 2026: 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry; leads open-source protein design tools

Determining the three-dimensional shape of a protein used to take a graduate student an entire career. Google DeepMind released AlphaFold 4 in March 2026, extending progress from the original AlphaFold's 2018 win, with the system predicting multi-protein structures in minutes instead of hours or days.

Updated May 30