Anthropic steps in to develop new drugs: a pharmaceutical company with only 1 employee advances two rare disease studies using Claude.

Beating AI News Flash: Anthropic is now personally entering the fray to develop new drugs. The company announced it has acquired Mithril Medicine. This pharmaceutical company has only 1 full-time employee, yet it is simultaneously researching two rare childhood muscular dystrophies, and one of the projects has already achieved preliminary animal experiment results.

This is not Anthropic's first foray into the pharmaceutical industry. In April this year, it acquired computational biology company Coefficient Bio. In September, Reuters also found that it had established its own biology lab in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time, Anthropic's head of life sciences also emphasized that the company would not compete with pharmaceutical companies responsible for bringing drugs to market, and for the time being would not conduct human clinical trials. Now, it already has its own drug development projects.

Mithril founder Cody Tranbarger has a background in biology and pharmaceutical investment. He did not build a complete experimental team, but instead used Claude to handle contracts, analyze data, arrange experiments, and coordinate 11 external laboratories, with additional support from part-time scientific advisors. In less than 18 months, one of the antibody therapies advanced from concept to mouse experiments.

After 6 weeks of treatment, the grip strength and muscle strength of mice in the high-dose group were approximately twice those of the untreated group. Between 2 and 6 weeks of age, 1 of 8 mice in the treatment group died, while 4 in the untreated group died. However, the sample is still small and cannot yet prove efficacy in humans. Anthropic hopes to begin human clinical trials for the first project as early as the end of 2028.

At the same time, Anthropic is also collaborating with 6 institutions including Bristol Myers Squibb. Bristol Myers Squibb has already used Claude to analyze proprietary clinical trial data and evaluate R&D plans. Risks have also emerged: pharmaceutical companies rely on Claude to develop drugs while facing a technology supplier that has also begun to own its own R&D pipeline.

Reuters previously pointed out that pharmaceutical companies may worry about Anthropic accessing competitive R&D information. Although the company has adopted data isolation measures, as its own projects increase, the boundary of interests between the two sides may become increasingly difficult to delineate.