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by KidComputer 1255 days ago
It’s difficult, but doable and nowhere near as hard as the synthetic chemistry need to produce small molecule therapeutics to fight novel pathogens. The hardest part in my opinion would be getting accurate predictions of protein-protein binding free energies.

> create novel drugs rapidly or even prevantatively. On your final point I’m skeptical. Drugs are difficult to design because you need to account for off-target effects among other things. That’s not a concern when designing a harmful agent. Furthermore I presume one could intelligently harden the pathogen so any potential treatment might be as harmful as the pathogen itself. But that’s a strong assumption and I know of no way to formally verify it.