Pitching Critical Assessment for Therapeutic Protein Design (CAT-PD) QuickFire Challenge Grant

Pitching Critical Assessment for Therapeutic Protein Design (CAT-PD) QuickFire Challenge Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC
Last Updated: December 07, 2025

Summary

The Pitching Critical Assessment for Therapeutic Protein Design (CAT-PD) QuickFire Challenge invites global innovators to submit novel computational techniques for designing antibody sequences against challenging therapeutic targets. Leveraging advances in AI for protein structure prediction, the challenge aims to accelerate drug discovery processes. Selected applicants will present their innovations to Johnson & Johnson's leadership in January 2026, with finalists potentially collaborating on further antibody design efforts. This initiative reflects a commitment to harnessing cutting-edge technology in medicine.

Overview

In the quest to discover novel drugs to treat disease, challenging therapeutic targets still often elude traditional drug discovery techniques (i.e., screening) leaving many targets undrugged.1 While AI approaches are starting to rapidly decrease discovery timelines, holding the promise to develop therapeutics to reach patients faster, the impact AI techniques have on generating novel therapeutic starting points remains to be determined.2 Excitingly, recent advances in using AI for protein structure prediction have been extended to design protein-protein interactions from scratch, a prerequisite for designing antibodies that can be targeted for therapeutic intervention.3,4,5 This work has recently been recognized with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,6 demonstrating the potential value these approaches can bring to the generation of new and important medicines. Challenges remain in deploying these models for antibody design in part due to data scarcity. However, recent studies suggest these models are rapidly improving and may soon be ready to deploy against therapeutic antibody targets.7 To help advance drug discovery using in silico approaches, Johnson & Johnson launched the Pitching Critical Assessment for Therapeutic Protein Design (CAT-PD) QuickFire Challenge. Innovators worldwide are invited to submit their potentially transformative computational techniques aimed at designing antibody sequences de novo against “hard-to-drug” targets. Selected applicants will have the opportunity to showcase their models/technologies during a closed-door presentation to Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine R&D leadership in San Francisco during the week of January 11-15, 2026.* Finalists may also be given the opportunity to collaborate with Johnson & Johnson in a closed-door challenge aimed at designing antibody sequences against a “hard-to-drug" target(s). Further details of this opportunity, which will be completely voluntary, will be shared with finalists.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Innovators around the world are invited to submit their novel technologies and/or techniques with sufficient detail to determine the potential to generate de novo designed sequences against a target of interest.Specific areas of interest include:AI/ML models with the ability to predict and/or generate antigen-antibody binding interactions against a targeted epitope.

Ineligibility

Technologies that are not in scope for this challenge include: Platform capabilities wholly focused on small-molecule, peptide, or mini-protein-based modalities