Mice got a lethal dose of cobra neurotoxin, then 15 minutes later a protein that did not exist in nature.

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Mice got a lethal dose of cobra neurotoxin, then 15 minutes later a protein that did not exist in nature. All of them lived. Antivenom is still made by injecting an animal with venom and harvesting its antibodies. But that method works poorly against paralysing toxins: They are too small to provoke a strong antibody response in the animal. David Baker's lab at the University of Washington used AI instead. A deep learning method drew proteins that fit the toxins, then the team grew the proteins in bacteria. 3 designs. 2 against the paralysing neurotoxins, 1 against the cytotoxins that destroy flesh. Both neurotoxin binders protected 5 of 5 mice, and neither neutralised the other's target toxin. Given 15 minutes after a lethal dose, both binders still protected every mouse. At 30 minutes, only 1 binder still saved every mouse, and the other saved 3 of 5. The proteins are about 100 amino acids. One was still stable at 95 °C. That matters because current antivenom needs a cold chain, and the burden falls on low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Papua New Guinea and Latin America. The results are for mice. No one has given these proteins to a person. And the survival tests used purified toxins rather than whole venom. Every year snakebite kills more than 100,000 people and leaves about 300,000 more with permanent disabilities. This paper went through Claims this week: 11 claims. #MedTwitter

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