A protein engineering method may lead to more exact cancer treatments

Enzymes called proteases act like molecular scissors for proteins in the body and play a role in therapies to stop viruses from replicating and to kill cancer cells. The development of these medicines, however, has been slowed by the difficulty of predicting how individual proteases will behave. Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have now developed a machine-learning model that analyzes how proteases have evolved over time to predict whether a specific protease will carry out an intended task before testing it in the lab.