Anthropic starts its own drug discovery programs with Claude

Anthropic has begun running drug discovery programs of its own, expanding Claude’s role from research assistant to a system embedded across scientific and operational work. The company says its internal efforts include rare childhood forms of muscular dystrophy, alongside partnerships with six drug developers and investors.

The update includes several early, company-reported results. Generate Biomedicines says a Claude-assisted design for a CAR T-cell component was about 70% shorter and produced roughly ten times as many receptors in lab tests. Divergence Labs used Claude to generate around 35,000 antibody designs for a food-allergy treatment and found early candidates for both parts of its proposed drug. BigHat Biosciences tested about 1,010 Claude-guided variants and reported improvements in binding, heat stability and aggregation. Enveda says Claude reduced review time for manufacturing documents by 89% while finding issues missed by people.

Anthropic also acquired Mithril Medicine, a one-person company developing treatments for two muscular dystrophies, and brought its founder into the company to continue the work.

Most programs remain preclinical, and promising lab results do not show that a medicine is safe or effective in humans. Even so, the move is strategically important: Anthropic is no longer only supplying models to biotech companies; it is directly participating in the drug-development pipeline and using that work to shape future Claude capabilities.