Citrini Research used Anthropic's Claude to design scorpion antivenom: 17 binders from 211 designs

Citrini Research spent three months working with Anthropic's internal research model to test whether non-biologists could use AI to design a drug. In one overnight run from Anthropic's offices, Claude spawned more than 300 sub-agents on more than 300 concurrent GPUs to design, score and send proteins to a lab for synthesis. Targeting scorpion neurotoxins, which kill over 3,000 people a year, 17 of 211 designs tested met the team's binder criteria; none bound more than one toxin and none has yet been tested for neutralisation, according to Anthropic's head of drug discovery Nathan C. Frey. The team says Claude compressed a year's work into days, but lab turnaround then took two months.