From NVIDIA: 2025-02-07 09:00:36

Every year, venomous snakes kill over 100,000 people and leave 300,000 more with devastating injuries. Traditional antivenoms are expensive, hard to manufacture, and often ineffective. A team led by Susana Vázquez Torres has used AI to create new proteins that neutralize lethal snake venom faster, cheaper, and more effectively.

Antivenom production has relied on animal immunization for over a century, but Torres and her team aim to replace this with AI-driven protein design. Using NVIDIA Ampere and L40 GPUs, they generated millions of potential antitoxin structures in computer simulations and identified the most promising designs.

Newly designed proteins successfully neutralized deadly snake venom toxins in lab and mouse studies. They were heat-resistant, easy to manufacture, and did not require cold storage. This breakthrough could offer a more affordable and accessible treatment option for snakebite victims in rural communities.

The AI-designed proteins could be mass-produced at low cost, potentially saving millions of lives and livelihoods. Beyond snakebites, this AI-driven approach could also revolutionize the development of precision treatments for viral infections, autoimmune diseases, and other hard-to-treat conditions, making life-saving medicines more affordable and accessible worldwide.

Researchers are now preparing the venom-neutralizing proteins for clinical testing and large-scale production. If successful, this AI-driven advancement could have a profound impact on saving lives and uplifting families and communities globally.



Read more at NVIDIA: AI-Designed Proteins Take on Deadly Snake Venom