Get the latest tech news
Will protein design tools solve the snake antivenom shortage?
5.1k words, 24 minutes reading time
The basic pitch of it is to simply go through the usual horse/sheep production process, find the antibodies that are made in response to the venoms, and get an E. coli cell to produce the same thing via genetic engineering. Antivenoms lack this advantage: they predominantly affect low-income populations in developing countries, regions with limited purchasing power, inconsistent healthcare infrastructure, and unpredictable demand. At best, the thermostable properties of our hallucinated antivenoms — a phenomenon seen in both the Baker lab paper and also a weirdly consistent characteristic of many AI-generated proteins — makes the cold supply chain less of a bottleneck.
Or read this on Hacker News