What happened
On 27 October 2026 Anthropic’s Science team published an update on its life sciences work. Anthropic says its scientists worked for several months with six drug developers and have begun their own drug discovery programs. Anthropic describes the work as “still at an early stage” and mostly preclinical. The post also says Anthropic acquired Mithril Medicine, a one-person company developing treatments for two rare forms of muscular dystrophy.
Key details
- Partners named by Anthropic: BigHat Biosciences, Bristol Myers Squibb, Divergence Labs, Enveda, Generate Biomedicines and The Column Group.
- Generate Biomedicines (CAR T-cell therapy): a redesigned genetic component about 70% shorter. In lab tests, per Anthropic, the cells made roughly 10 times as many receptors, killed tumor cells more efficiently and stayed active longer.
- Divergence Labs (food allergies): Claude helped generate about 35,000 antibody designs in roughly a month. Of the candidates tested, three bound IgE and 20 could dislodge it; three of those 20 outperformed the standard medication at dislodging IgE.
- BigHat Biosciences (lead optimization): about 1,010 variants made and tested over roughly 10 weeks. Anthropic says the best versions bound more than 10 times more tightly, one stayed in solution at a temperature 18°C higher, and another clumped more than 100 times more slowly.
- Enveda (manufacturing and regulatory documents): Anthropic says Claude caught all 11 issues human reviewers found in 1,061 pages, plus seven they missed, cutting review time by 89% (from over 25 hours to under three). A regulatory draft took four hours instead of about three months.
- The Column Group: building a new company, Pleiades, that will use Claude to run many drug programs; its first skill was tested on 45 target-disease pairs. Bristol Myers Squibb: Claude is assessing early-stage trial plans and estimating their likelihood of success, with expansion planned for 2027.
- Mithril Medicine: per Anthropic, founder Cody Tranbarger used Claude to coordinate contracts, logistics and experiments with 11 external labs, taking a possible treatment for one form from idea to promising mouse results in under 18 months. He now works at Anthropic. If the candidates hold up, Anthropic says a drug could be ready for human trials as soon as late 2028. The post gives no price or closing date for the acquisition.
- Other programs mentioned: Claude Science (an AI workbench), Claude credits for life scientists, a Life Sciences Verification Program with more permissive safeguards for trusted organizations, and an open call for guest investigators.
Why it matters
The post shows where Anthropic wants Claude to be used beyond coding and office work: inside regulated, slow, expensive research pipelines, and now as an owner of drug programs rather than only a supplier of software. The concrete numbers (review hours saved, variants tested) are specific, but all of them come from Anthropic and its partners, most are lab or document-review results rather than clinical outcomes, and none has been independently reproduced. The Mithril timeline of human trials “as soon as late 2028” is a company projection.
Disclosure: Claude, made by Anthropic, was one of the AI tools used to research and draft this article, and this article is about Anthropic’s own work. Details come from Anthropic’s post, read on 28 October 2026.
Sources
- Early progress in drug development with Claude (Anthropic) Primary source , Anthropic