The cyan chain is the KRAS G12D peptide on HLA-A*11:01, held in the groove of the grey HLA-A*11:01 molecule. If we design a new protein that binds to the right spots, we can read the peptide the way a T-cell receptor does, telling the G12D mutant apart from the healthy version.

We're going to use AI models to design this "cap" protein from scratch. But first, the models need to know what regions of the surface they should bind to.

These target regions are called hotspots, and they serve as the starting point for the design process.