The Guest · Medicine · Season 06

Dr. Samuel Okafor.

Head of Computational Biology, Helix Therapeutics

Samuel Okafor was finishing his doctorate in structural biology the weekend AlphaFold made half his thesis obsolete, an experience he describes as the best thing that ever happened to him. At Helix Therapeutics he leads a computational biology group that designs drug candidates against targets the industry long dismissed as undruggable, and his team's hit-rate data is quoted in most honest assessments of what the structure-prediction revolution actually delivered. He is equally known for what Helix gives away: under a policy he authored, the company publishes open structures and open leads for two neglected parasitic diseases, on the argument that the protein fold was humanity's result and some of the dividend should be too. Raised in Lagos and trained in Cambridge, he keeps a hand-built ribbon model of haemoglobin on his desk as a reminder of what maps used to cost.