This challenge ran during EPFL Protein Design Week in March 2026, as part of Designing Life with AI. Participants had the Protein Design Skills plugin for Claude Code available, which puts BindCraft, RFdiffusion, ProteinMPNN and Boltz behind one agent-facing interface.

Myostatin (GDF-8, MSTN, UniProt O14793) is the TGF-beta family member that holds back skeletal muscle growth, and it is having a second clinical moment because roughly a quarter of the weight lost on semaglutide and tirzepatide is lean mass. Lilly and Regeneron both have myostatin programs in Phase 2 combination trials for that reason.

We tested 100 designs against the human GDF-8 latent complex, five-point series up to 1000 nM, two replicates.

All designs and binding data are open under ODC-BY.