Case Study: a top-20 pharmaceutical company improves Staphylococcus aureus vaccine thermostability by 2.5 °C with Cradle

Top-20 Pharmaceutical Company improves Staphylococcus aureus vaccine thermostability by 2.5 °C with Cradle

Scientists at a top-20 pharmaceutical company needed to significantly improve the thermostability of a *Staphylococcus aureus* vaccine antigen for deployment. Based on their historical rational design methods, they estimated that achieving the required 2.5 °C increase in melting temperature would take approximately seven rounds of experimentation, representing a months-long process. They partnered with Cradle to accelerate this optimization.

Using Cradle's machine learning framework in a zero-shot mode, the partner generated and tested 96 candidates in a single round. The best candidate delivered the exact target improvement of a +2.50 °C increase in melting temperature. This result, which Cradle achieved 7 times faster than the estimated rational design approach, provided the partner with multiple viable candidates and substantially reduced development timelines and costs.