Anthropic says Claude designed 17 lab confirmed protein binders against scorpion neurotoxins, an early step toward new antivenoms
New on our Science Blog: designing protein binders against scorpion neurotoxins. Scorpions sting about 1.2m people every year, and antivenoms are often costly or in short supply. Claude has made an early step toward finding new treatments.
Context
It shows an AI agent running much of a real drug discovery campaign, with results confirmed in outside labs, for a disease that gets little investment.
Scorpion stings are a neglected health problem, and today's antivenoms are made from the antibodies of immunized horses, a slow and costly process. Anthropic showed in August that Claude could design protein minibinders from a single prompt, and this study applies the approach to a medical target.
Deep dive
On October 20, Anthropic posted that Claude has made an early step toward new treatments for scorpion stings, which it said affect about 1.2 million people a year, by designing protein binders against scorpion neurotoxins.
According to Anthropic's blog, an internal research model working within Claude Science ran the design campaign mostly on its own for 64 hours, with four follow up prompts from the team. The project was developed with Citrini Research, an investment research firm. Claude used 12 design tools to generate 318,484 designs and picked 180 for testing, and the team added 31 more. The campaign used on the order of 10,000 GPU hours.
Two contract labs, Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience, tested all 211 designs. Seventeen met Anthropic's strict criteria for a binder, each against a single toxin. Among single toxin designs the hit rate was 18%, which Anthropic says is typical for protein design. None of the designs meant to bind several toxins at once succeeded.
The two strongest binders attach to Cn2, a toxin from a Mexican scorpion, with single digit nanomolar affinity, and competition tests suggest they bind near the same site as an antibody shown to neutralize Cn2 in mice.
Anthropic says it has not tested whether any binder neutralizes venom in cells or protects animals, so it does not claim an antivenom. Outside experts Susana Vázquez Torres and Timothy P. Jenkins called the work a promising first step. Anthropic is releasing all 211 designs and their data.
What to expect next
Watch whether Anthropic or other groups test the strongest Cn2 binders against venom in cells and then in mice, the steps Anthropic says are needed before any therapy. The release of all 211 designs lets outside researchers check and build on the results. Also watch whether Claude Science becomes available beyond Anthropic's own team, and whether similar agent run campaigns follow for snakebite and other neglected diseases.