diff --git a/poetry.lock b/poetry.lock
index 6347608..a589056 100644
--- a/poetry.lock
+++ b/poetry.lock
@@ -366,17 +366,6 @@ files = [
     {file = "cycler-0.11.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:9c87405839a19696e837b3b818fed3f5f69f16f1eec1a1ad77e043dcea9c772f"},
 ]
 
-[[package]]
-name = "defusedxml"
-version = "0.7.1"
-description = "XML bomb protection for Python stdlib modules"
-optional = false
-python-versions = ">=2.7, !=3.0.*, !=3.1.*, !=3.2.*, !=3.3.*, !=3.4.*"
-files = [
-    {file = "defusedxml-0.7.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:a352e7e428770286cc899e2542b6cdaedb2b4953ff269a210103ec58f6198a61"},
-    {file = "defusedxml-0.7.1.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:1bb3032db185915b62d7c6209c5a8792be6a32ab2fedacc84e01b52c51aa3e69"},
-]
-
 [[package]]
 name = "et-xmlfile"
 version = "1.1.0"
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 305bcdf..1b689f5 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@ classifiers = [
 [tool.poetry.dependencies]
 python = ">=3.9,<3.12"
 bio = "1.6.2"
-defusedxml = "0.7.1"
 lxml = "5.2.1"
 mdanalysis = "2.7.0"
 requests = "2.31.0"
diff --git a/src/arctic3d/modules/blast.py b/src/arctic3d/modules/blast.py
index cfc0b09..4b85fd7 100644
--- a/src/arctic3d/modules/blast.py
+++ b/src/arctic3d/modules/blast.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 """Function to BLAST input sequence and return accession id."""
+
 import logging
 import os
 import shlex
@@ -7,7 +8,7 @@
 from pathlib import Path
 
 from Bio.Blast import NCBIWWW
-from defusedxml import lxml as ET
+from lxml import etree as ET
 
 log = logging.getLogger("arctic3d.log")