UCB advances its digital antibody engineering program with new Cradle collaboration

BRUSSELS, Belgium & AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 4 November, 2026 – UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company, and Cradle, which builds a leading AI-driven protein design and engineering platform, today announced a strategic collaboration. The collaboration is the latest step in UCB’s expanding digital antibody discovery and engineering program, which draws on the company’s own successful antibody discovery platform combined with computational science, deep expertise in disease biology and a network of technology and research partners.

Under the collaboration, UCB will apply Cradle’s platform within selected discovery projects from hit generation through lead optimization and preclinical readiness. The collaboration reflects UCB’s mission of translating cutting-edge science into meaningful advances for patients. By fully integrating AI across the discovery process and strengthening its digital antibody engineering capabilities, UCB aims to accelerate the ability to identify and optimize high-quality candidates for diseases where patients continue to need better options.

“At UCB, we view AI not as something to chase for its own sake, but as a scientific force multiplier that augments human expertise across biology, chemistry, and translational research. We are excited to partner with Cradle as we expand our digital antibody engineering capabilities,” said Alistair Henry, Chief Scientific Officer of UCB. “Adding Cradle’s end-to-end platform across our discovery pipeline allows us to apply computational approaches in a deeply rigorous and translational way. Predictive modeling combined with wet-lab validation allows us to potentially design better molecules, learn faster, and bring high-quality therapeutics to patients even sooner.”

As UCB scientists use the Cradle platform across programs, experimental results continuously feed back into program-specific models. This creates a compounding learning loop or “lab-in-the-loop” that supports scientists in applying their expertise and judgement to optimize candidates across the full set of properties required for success and accelerate progression toward a potential candidate.

“AI will have its greatest impact on biologics R&D when it can be scaled beyond individual experiments or programs and become part of how scientists work across the discovery organization,” said Stef van Grieken, CEO and Co-Founder of Cradle. “Partnering with UCB brings Cradle across its biotherapeutics pipeline, giving scientists a common platform to apply AI to more programs, more modalities and more complex engineering challenges and ultimately advance better therapies.”

About UCB

UCB, Brussels, Belgium (www.ucb.com) is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative medicines and solutions to transform the lives of people living with severe diseases of the immune system or of the central nervous system. With more than 9000 people in approximately 40 countries, the company generated revenue of €7.7 billion in 2025. UCB is listed on Euronext Brussels (symbol: UCB).

About Cradle

Cradle’s mission is to enable every scientist to turn today’s impossible cures, foods, and materials into tomorrow’s ordinary. Cradle’s end-to-end protein engineering platform helps scientists intentionally engineer biologics across the full design-to-candidate lifecycle, bringing AI-driven molecular engineering, active learning from experimental data, and multi-property optimization together in a single system. Today, the platform is trusted by many of the biggest names in global pharmaceutical, industrial bio, agriculture and consumer goods across more than 80 active R&D programs. Cradle is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Zürich, Switzerland and the United States with a team of machine learning and biotech research experts with deep industry experience from many of the world’s leading technology and biotech companies. Cradle is backed by IVP as well as Index Ventures and Kindred Capital. For more information, visit cradle.bio.