Cinference: The Future of Protein Engineering

Written by Caroline Babisz & Tia Abbas, edited by Swathi Kumar & Shaan Subramaniam

The Science Entrepreneur Club (SEC) is pleased to introduce our next wonderful Innovators Club Member, ‘Cinference’. Cinference are using pioneering technology to design proteins; their platform aims to speed up the drug development process. We interviewed the co-founders to find out more about how Cinference work, what goals they have and what they are planning next…

Christian Wirsching and Cuong To are the Berlin-based, driven co-founders responsible for building Cinference. Chris has a background in mechanical engineering and business administration. He worked in strategy consultancy before meeting Cuong on the “Entrepreneur First” programme. Cuong has been in data science research for years, he made the switch from academia to industry and then decided he wanted to start his own company and began his journey with Chris on the entrepreneurial programme.

Both co-founders wanted to build a company with a technological edge that could solve problems they were passionate about. Cuong’s research background in data science enabled them to quickly build machine learning models from experimental data. By further developing these initial computational methods, they’ve built a platform that tackles major issues in protein engineering.

“We knew that starting a company is very straining and can take a long time, so we wanted to create and build something we both had a passion for and don’t regret any minute of time spent – that’s how we ended up in biotech”

At the core of Cinference is their computational or ‘in silico’ model that uses public data along with proprietary lab data to generate novel proteins with the desired therapeutic functions. First, a selection of protein candidates that have a very high predicted binding affinity to the target are chosen. Next, they run a wet laboratory validation round and further optimise the candidates in-silico. Cinference design de novo protein candidates for their internal pipeline and together with partners.

“The future vision is that we can design and optimise everything in silico, with only a final stage validation required”

Chris and Cuong discussed with us just how important their work within the protein discovery process is; they stress that current methodology can be very cumbersome and can take years before a suitable candidate might be identified. The current process is also limited by the building blocks of nature since researchers usually start with a natural protein and try to tweak it into a functional therapy. We spoke about the common frustrations within protein engineering, where high quality protein candidates are thought to have been identified, only to discover that they fail further downstream in clinical trials.

“The overall aim of Cinference is to make better therapies and also new therapies for the 95% of today’s non-treatable diseases.”

Chris and Cuong gave us an insight into their current target and product focus – designing small de novo protein inhibitors for autoimmune diseases. These can be designed from scratch with high binding affinity and multi-specificity. The Cinference machine learning platform enables them to design large parts of their de novo proteins autonomously. The team at Cinference also foresees a great potential of small de novo proteins for the treatment of solid tumours, where antibodies were less effective due their poor ability to penetrate tissues.  

“We aim to build data efficient models that are cost-effective”

Designing proteins using computational means is still very new and methods are changing and growing every day. Examples of tools that have recently gained traction include AlphaFold, which uses algorithms to predict protein structures. In the midst of this growing field, Cinference are adopting quicker and more efficient approaches to generate their protein designs.

“We are ensuring that trust is built between us and our collaborators”

Cinference are collaborating with a wide scope of experts from various fields of science to help achieve their end goal. They are working closely with biotech companies on designing small proteins for cancer targets, gene therapy companies to generate new delivery systems with high tropism as well as working at research consortiums for protein generation.

“We aim to fully validate our platform by next year in our own high-tech lab space in Germany”

Chris and Cuong have been working closely with their advisory board, academic and commercial partners to work out their strategy to build a full stack biotech. Cinference is moving into their lab space in February, a fully serviced high-tech lab with S1 and S2 laboratories and state of the art equipment. Now they are planning to grow their employment base, incorporating cell biologists, structural biologists, and protein engineers. After validating their platform, they will aim to scale up their company, through working with big pharma companies on drug development, as well as working on advancing their own pipeline. It will be exciting to watch Cinference grow and edge closer towards an exclusively in silico approach to de novo protein synthesis. If you are currently searching for your next opportunity, the SEC urge you to look at what Cinference have to offer. They are currently hiring and looking for enthusiastic candidates to join their team. Have a look using the link below to see current opportunities.

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