Hansa Biopharma, a developer of treatments for rare IgG-related immunologic conditions, is partnering with Cradle, builders of an AI-driven protein design and engineering platform for biologics.
Hansa will use Cradle’s end-to-end platform across its discovery pipeline to design, optimise, and advance novel therapeutic candidates. Utilising Cradle’s AI-driven protein engineering platform, the companies will work to accelerate the development of new therapeutics for patients with severe autoimmune diseases.
Hansa’s imlifidase, a first-in-class enzyme, is commercially available in Europe under the brand name Idefirix and is currently under FDA review with a PDUFA date in December for high-sensitised patients awaiting kidney transplant.
Sofia Järnum, VP, head of Research and Early Development at Hansa, said, “We evaluated several AI models and vendors and selected Cradle because it combines three capabilities we believe are essential for next-generation protein engineering: end-to-end support across the discovery pipeline, from hit identification onward; multi-parameter optimisation across complex engineering objectives; and active learning from our own data to drive increasingly predictable outcomes. Each accelerates our lab-in-the-loop process. Cradle’s platform enables Hansa scientists to design and engineer better therapeutic candidates, faster and with greater probability of success.”
The collaboration reflects Hansa’s strategic investment in AI-powered drug discovery as it develops the next generation of its pipeline. Cradle’s track record of delivering results with biopharmaceutical companies made it an ideal partner as Hansa expands its use of AI across new discovery programmes.
Additionally, the partnership reflects a growing shift toward unified AI platforms that combine candidate generation, optimisation, and continuous learning from experimental data in a single workflow. According to Cradle, customers report development timelines up to 18 months faster, suggesting translation into significant R&D savings per clinical candidate.
Stef van Grieken, CEO and co-founder of Cradle, said, “The future of multimodality therapeutics engineering isn’t about spending more AI tokens or navigating a stable of models. It’s about empowering scientists with a platform that learns alongside them, while enabling them to apply their unique human expertise to solve complex molecular challenges at scale, with speed and precision. We’re excited to partner with Hansa on their mission to accelerate the discovery and development of novel, high-quality therapeutics for patients suffering from rare and severe autoimmune disorders.”
