This week, Robert and Haley dive into the exciting release of AlphaFold3’s code for academic use—DeepMind’s latest move in its groundbreaking AI-driven protein prediction tool that just earned a Nobel Prize. Now, academic researchers can directly access AlphaFold3’s models, enabling them to push the limits of drug discovery and protein interaction research even further.

We explore:

• What AlphaFold3 brings to the table: From modeling protein interactions with DNA to mapping out complex molecular structures in ways previous versions couldn’t.
• Openness and its impact: How access to the code could change drug research, but with limits, since only certain academic users can access model weights.
• Global competition: Companies like Baidu and ByteDance have already rolled out AlphaFold3-inspired tools; we’ll discuss how they stack up.

Tune in as we discuss what this means for the scientific community and the potential applications that lie ahead, plus the big-picture questions around open science and AI in biotechnology.