Anthropic's Claude Designs Scorpion Toxin Protein Binders in Lab Tests

Anthropic's Claude largely autonomously generated 318,484 protein binder designs targeting 5 neurotoxins across 4 scorpion species—which kill more than 3,250 people annually—operating on its own for 24 hours inside the Claude Science research environment before the research team steered the work with additional instructions. Researchers tested 211 total candidates in the lab, comprising 180 chosen by Claude and 31 added by the human team, with 17 designs meeting the criteria for a functional binder and receiving confirmation from two independent laboratories. The two strongest candidates bound extremely tightly to Cn2, a toxin produced by the Mexican scorpion, with laboratory tests suggesting they dock at or near the same site as an antibody known to neutralize Cn2 in mice, though whether they function as an actual antivenom has not been tested yet. External experts Susana Vázquez Torres and Timothy P. Jenkins described the findings as a promising first step, building on an earlier study where Claude designed mini-binders against 14 of 15 target proteins at hit rates of 22% to 35% compared to the typical 10% to 15%.