Claude designed 318K proteins against scorpion toxins
Why it matters
Anthropic's science team, working with Citrini Research, had Claude run an early-stage drug-discovery binder campaign largely on its own. From one prompt and four follow-ups, Claude worked mainly autonomously for 64 hours: it chose the toxin structures and target hotspots on five scorpion neurotoxins from Mexico, Brazil, North Africa and the Middle East, set its own quality thresholds, used 12 design tools to generate 318,484 protein designs, and screened 553,052 design-toxin pairs (on the order of 10,000 GPU hours). Claude picked 180 designs and the team added 31; two labs, Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience, tested all 211, and 17 met strict binding criteria, each against a single toxin. The two strongest bind the Mexican scorpion toxin Cn2 at single-digit nanomolar affinity and attach on or near the same site as an antibody reported to neutralize Cn2 in mice. Scorpions sting 1.2 million or more people a year, causing more than 3,250 deaths, mostly children, and antivenoms are often costly or in short supply. Caveat: this is not an antivenom. No design has been tested for neutralization in cells or for efficacy in animals, and none of the multi-toxin designs met the criteria for more than one toxin. Anthropic is releasing all 211 designs and their binding data.
Read the source: Anthropic (opens in a new tab)
All hits from 23 Oct 2026More ResearchGet the daily hits by email