Partnerships with 6 companies, plus its own drug discovery
Anthropic announced on Oct. 28 (Oct. 29 Japan time) that it has entered deep research partnerships with six companies on drug development and is entering drug discovery itself. It also released early results on how its AI, Claude, supports each stage of drug development.
The company explained that the bottlenecks in drug development are not in one place but scattered across the entire process. The previous day, Oct. 27, it filed to go public on the Nasdaq market, and its filing also cited the potential for AI to find treatments as one of its biggest advantages.
A 1-person company reaches mouse trials in 18 months
Anthropic acquired Mithril Medicine, a U.S. startup with one employee. Founder Cody Tranbarger used Claude to manage contracts with 11 outside research labs and arrange experiments, advancing a treatment candidate for a type of muscular dystrophy, a rare disease, from concept to mouse trials in less than 18 months. Mice given the antibody candidate showed about twice the grip strength of mice not given it, the company said. If things go well, human trials could begin as early as the end of 2028. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Results at partners
The six partners are as follows, and all results are reported by the companies or Anthropic.
| Partner | How Claude is used and results |
|---|---|
| Generate Biomedicines | Redesigned part of a cell used in cancer treatment; a design about 70% shorter yielded about 10 times more receptors |
| Divergence Labs | Designed about 35,000 antibodies in about one month for a food allergy treatment |
| BigHat Biosciences | Tested 1,010 antibody modifications in about 10 weeks; the best showed more than 10 times stronger binding |
| Enveda | Inspected 1,061 pages of manufacturing records, finding 7 issues in addition to the 11 found by people; cut inspection time by 89% |
| The Column Group | Created a new company, Pleiades, to advance drug development with Claude |
| Bristol Myers Squibb | Evaluates trial plans for early-stage drugs and estimates their likelihood of success |
Most before human trials
Most of the results are from the stage before human trials. Mithril's technical report has not been peer-reviewed. Anthropic bought Coefficient Bio for $400 million in April, and in August announced that Claude had designed proteins that bind to scorpion toxin, continuing its investment in life sciences.
