Anthropic says its Claude AI is helping speed up new medicine research

Anthropic says its Claude AI is now helping scientists with early medicine research, from cancer treatments to food allergy drugs. In one case, a review of manufacturing paperwork dropped from more than 25 hours to under three. The company stresses that most of the work is early lab research. The first human trials could begin as early as late 2028.

What Anthropic reported

Over the past several months, Anthropic has worked with six organizations: BigHat Biosciences, Bristol Myers Squibb, Divergence Labs, Enveda, Generate Biomedicines and The Column Group. It has also started its own drug discovery programs. The figures below come from Anthropic's announcement.

• Divergence Labs: Claude produced about 35,000 antibody designs in roughly a month for a food allergy project.
• BigHat Biosciences: a lab team made and tested about 1,010 variants over 10 weeks to improve two antibody fragments.
• Enveda: Claude reviewed 1,061 pages of manufacturing documents and cut review time by 89%.

What the results look like

Antibodies are proteins the body uses to latch onto specific targets. In the food allergy work, early tests found three designs that could bind to IgE, a molecule involved in allergic reactions. Twenty could detach it from immune cells. Three of those appeared to beat a standard medication in this specific test.

At Generate Biomedicines, researchers used Claude Code to redesign part of the genetic instructions behind CAR T-cell therapy, mostly used for blood cancers. One design was about 70% shorter than the standard version. In lab tests it let immune cells make roughly 10 times as many receptors and kill tumor cells more efficiently.

At Enveda, the Claude-powered system found all 11 issues that human reviewers had caught. It also flagged seven more.

Planning trials and a new acquisition

Anthropic is also working with Bristol Myers Squibb on clinical trial planning. Claude is analyzing plans for an early-stage drug candidate and estimating the chance a trial will succeed. The companies plan to expand this in 2027 to see whether it improves early decision-making.

Anthropic also acquired Mithril Medicine, which is developing treatments for two rare forms of muscular dystrophy. Founder Cody Tranbarger used Claude to coordinate experiments with 11 outside laboratories. Anthropic says the work produced promising results in mice in less than 18 months.

What is not known yet

Anthropic says the research is early and mostly preclinical. That means most of these potential treatments have not been tested in people. Lab and mouse results often do not carry over to humans. The announcement does not say how many of these projects will become approved medicines.

What happens next

If the Mithril drug candidates keep showing promise, Anthropic expects one could enter human trials as early as late 2028. The company plans to widen its work with biotech partners and test AI in more steps of drug development. For patients, the near-term change is likely faster lab work and paperwork, not new medicines on the shelf.