Claude autonomously designed protein binders against deadly scorpion toxins in 64 hours
Claude designed protein binders against scorpion neurotoxins
Anthropic asked an internal Claude research model to design minibinders against scorpion neurotoxins that kill thousands each year. Working mostly autonomously over 64 hours, Claude generated 318,484 designs and selected 180 for lab testing; partners Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience tested 211 designs, and 17 met the binding criteria. All data is public. The binders haven't been shown to neutralize venom, so this is not an antivenom — but outside experts call it a promising first step.
Designing a binder against almost any target no longer seems unrealistic. We can now obtain very tight binders remarkably quickly, and binding itself is no longer the main bottleneck.