Anthropic Launches Claude for Life Sciences, Aiming to Revolutionize Scientific Research

Claude enters the lab: Anthropic bets big on life sciences

Artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic is tailoring its Claude chatbot to researchers and life sciences companies, as AI groups race to create specialised applications from the technology. The San Francisco-based group said on Monday it is integrating Claude into tools that scientists already use, including lab management systems, genomic analysis platforms and biomedical databases, to tackle time-consuming tasks such as data analysis and literature review. Anthropic, which was valued at $170bn in September, said drugmaker Novo Nordisk has already used its AI model to cut clinical study documentation from more than 10 weeks to 10 minutes, while drug developer Sanofi said the majority of its employees use Claude every day. The move comes as tech groups are spending billions of dollars on AI products and models, believing the technology can benefit a range of industries from healthcare to energy and education. This has included a focus on the life sciences industry as top AI companies and start-ups bet on the potential for AI to speed up drug discovery and tackle disease. OpenAI and Mistral have recently announced new units focusing on scientific research. In February, Google unveiled a "co-scientist" tool that could help scientists come up with new hypotheses, and last week said its open Gemma model had helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway. "What I'm chasing is to bring to biologists the experience that software engineers have [with code generation]," said Eric Kauderer-Abrams, head of life sciences at Anthropic. "You can sit down with Claude and brainstorm ideas, generate hypotheses together." The company has seen success with its coding tool, Claude Code, which outperforms those of its competitors. Kauderer-Abrams said this helps give it an edge in the life sciences industry. "We're much more focused on amplifying the capabilities of individual scientists and building tools that accelerate the scientists' workflows than other companies are," said Kauderer-Abrams. He added that rival groups are trying to do that as well as directly doing science themselves. Some, such as DeepMind spin-off Isomorphic Labs, are trying to find their own drugs. However, so far, no drugs discovered by AI have been approved and many have failed in clinical trials. One hurdle has been getting enough data to create a general-purpose algorithm that can solve many different problems. Anthropic said it has made its models suitable for pharmaceutical research by bringing down the amount of times it produces "hallucinations" -- or factual errors. It has also offered audit trails for regulatory compliance and the ability to verify every insight against original sources. Kauderer-Abrams said the company was also banning requests related to prohibited agents, which could be used to make chemical weapons. The AI group's push into life sciences follows recent breakthroughs that showed large language models have the potential to help in scientific research. Last month, both Google DeepMind and OpenAI achieved gold medal-level performance at prestigious competitions for coding. Kauderer-Abrams said language models can take advantage of large existing and publicly available datasets in biology, such as ones on genomics and protein sequencing, which can be used to tailor the models for scientific research. "In life sciences, that's one area where pretty much everyone can agree that we can bring things that are unambiguously amazing," said Kauderer-Abrams.

Anthropic launches Claude Life Sciences to give researchers an AI efficiency boost

Proxy advisor ISS recommends Tesla shareholders oppose Musk's $1 trillion pay plan Anthropic, which is one of the companies at the center of the AI boom, develops a family of large language models called Claude. It was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers, and its valuation has swelled to $183 billion in just four years. The company launched a new model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, late last month and said it is "significantly better" at life sciences tasks like understanding laboratory protocols. Kauderer-Abrams said researchers have already been engaging with Anthropic's models to help with isolated parts of the scientific process, so the company decided to formally build out Claude for Life Sciences as a way to support them from start to finish. That meant Anthropic had to establish integrations with key players in the life sciences ecosystem, including Benchling, PubMed, 10x Genomics and Synapse.org, among others. Anthropic has also partnered with companies that can help life sciences organizations adopt AI, like Caylent, KPMG, Deloitte and cloud providers AWS and Google Cloud, the company said. "We're willing and enthusiastic about doing that grind to make sure that all the pieces come together," Kauderer-Abrams said. In a prerecorded demo, Anthropic showed how a scientist working on preclinical studies could use Claude for Life Sciences to compare two study designs that test different dosing strategies. The scientist was able to query her lab's data directly from Benchling, generate a summary and tables of key differences with links back to the original material. After reviewing the results, the scientist generated a study report that could be included in a regulatory submission. Anthropic said an analysis like this used to require "days" of validating and compiling information, but now, it can be done in minutes. Kauderer-Abrams said the company believes AI can bring about real efficiency gains for the life sciences sector, but it's also under "no illusions" that it will magically overcome the physical limitations of conducting scientific research. Clinical trials that take three years are not suddenly going to take one month, he said. Instead, Anthropic is focused on exploring the time consuming, expensive parts of the discovery process "piece by piece" to determine where AI could be most useful. "We're here to make sure that this transformation happens and that it's done responsibly," Kauderer-Abrams said.

Anthropic takes aim at biotech with Claude for Life Sciences - SiliconANGLE

Anthropic takes aim at biotech with Claude for Life Sciences Anthropic PBC has had a busy start to the week, launching a new tool called Claude for Life Sciences to help with scientific research, and expanding the availability of its Claude Code agentic coding tool to the web and its mobile application. Claude for Life Sciences might be the more interesting of the two announcements, as it sees the company customize its most powerful artificial intelligence model to help scientists perform tasks like drug discovery more efficiently. The company said Claude has been redesigned to connect with popular lab tools that are already used by lab researchers. The announcement marks the company's first stab at life sciences. Claude for Life Sciences is meant to help researchers at each step of the drug discovery process, and will do this by reading studies, conjuring up theories, crunching numbers and even preparing submissions to regulators. Anthropic Head of Biology and Life Sciences Eric Kauderer-Abrams told CNBC in an interview that the launch marks a threshold moment for the company, which has decided to make a big investment in this area. "We want a meaningful percentage of all of the life science work in the world to run on Claude, in the same way that that happens today with coding," he added. To achieve this, Anthropic has created a number of integrations that enable Claude for Life Sciences to work with research platforms such as Benchling, 10x Genomics, PubMed and Synapse.org. With those integrations, scientists can pull data from those platforms directly into Claude without needing to fiddle around exporting files or switching applications. The company has also reached out to a number of consulting partners to help teach life sciences organizations how to make the most out of Claude, including Deloitte Touche Ltd., KPMG International Ltd. and Caylent Inc. Kauderer-Abrams, who only joined Anthropic a couple of months ago, said the company was encouraged by the fact that many researchers were already using the standard Claude model to aid in their research. It inspired the company to build a dedicated version of Claude for researchers, and also build the additional infrastructure needed for it, he said. Claude for Life Sciences is based on Anthropic's most powerful large language model Claude Sonnet 4.5, which is designed to perform better on tasks such as reading lab protocols and other science-related tasks. In a demo, the company showed how a scientist conducting preclinical studies can use Claude for Life Sciences to contrast two different dosing plans of a new drug. It allows her to pull data straight from Benchling, auto-generate tables, compare the differences and then update the information in the original system. Once done, she then used Claude for Life Sciences to generate a study report for regulators. The company said this kind of work would normally take several days due to the time it takes to manually compile the results and validate everything, but with Claude, it can be done in just a few minutes. However, Kauderer-Abrams was quick to point out that AI won't be able to speed up the entire drug discovery process. For instance, it's not possible for AI to speed up things like clinical trials, he said. Where Anthropic and Claude can help is in speeding up the more repetitive parts of scientific workflows, such as the painstaking analysis and comparisons, regulatory paperwork and so on. "We're here to make sure this transformation happens and that it's done responsibly," Kauderer-Abrams said. Anthropic's other update today involves Claude Code, the agentic coding tool that was previously limited to developer's terminals, but is now coming to its mobile app and the Claude.ai web app. The agent is launching on these platforms as a "research preview", and for now, access is limited to those users with Pro and Max accounts only, the company said. It's really just a new way for developers to interact with Claude Code, but Anthropic believes it will be handy, especially for developers who want the agent to run multiple, well-defined coding tasks in parallel. They'll be able to connect the agent to their GitHub repositories, tell it what to do, and then simply sit back and supervise their work as the new code appears in the web interface. The agent will run in the sidebar, while the list of assigned tasks will appear on the left. The company pointed out that each Claude Code session runs in its own sandboxed environment for security reasons, with all Git interactions flowing through a secure proxy service, which helps to make sure it can only access repositories it has authorization for. Claude Code recently gained a new capability that lets developers steer it while it's working on a problem, and this feature is available in the web and mobile apps, so they'll be able to guide the agent without having to interrupt its work, potentially avoiding having to start over on a task. "Instead of managing individual coding tasks one at a time, developers can now oversee a fleet of Claude Code instances with confidence they'll finish safely and independently," the company said. "It's less about watching Claude work and more about delegating to an entire team -- you assign the work, Claude handles the execution, and you review the results when each task completes." According to Anthropic, it has been leaning heavily on Claude Code itself, and the agent has helped to write around 90% of its own codebase. This has enabled its engineering team to boost productivity by around 67% in the last few months. Claude Code has also turned into a nice little earner for the company, generating an annual revenue run-rate of more than $500 million.

Anthropic launches Claude for Life Sciences to speed up drug discovery

Anthropic's Head of Biology Eric Kauderer-Abrams says the goal is for "a meaningful percentage" of global life sciences work to run on Claude. Anthropic has launched Claude for Life Sciences, a specialized artificial intelligence tool to accelerate scientific research, and expanded its Claude Code agentic coding tool to web and mobile platforms to augment drug discovery and developer workflows. The introduction of Claude for Life Sciences marks Anthropic's first targeted entry into the life-sciences sector. The company has customized its AI model to assist scientists and researchers with tasks throughout the drug discovery process. The tool is designed to perform functions such as reading scientific studies, formulating theories based on existing data, analyzing large numerical datasets, and preparing documentation for regulatory submissions. The model has been specifically redesigned to connect with laboratory tools that are commonly used by researchers in their daily work, creating a more integrated environment. Anthropic's stated ambition for the new tool was outlined by Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the company's Head of Biology and Life Sciences. In an interview with CNBC, he described the launch as a significant investment for the company in this particular field. "We want a meaningful percentage of all of the life science work in the world to run on Claude, in the same way that that happens today with coding," Kauderer-Abrams stated. This objective positions the company's goals in the life-sciences domain to be as impactful as the role AI has already established in software development and coding assistance. To facilitate this level of integration, Anthropic has developed a series of direct connections for Claude for Life Sciences. The tool is engineered to work with established research platforms including Benchling, 10x Genomics, PubMed, and Synapse.org. These integrations allow scientists to pull data directly from these platforms into the Claude interface. This capability eliminates the need for researchers to manually export files or switch between different applications, a process that can be time-consuming and introduce potential for error. The streamlined workflow is intended to allow for a more fluid and efficient data analysis process within a single, unified system. In addition to the technical integrations, Anthropic has formed partnerships with several consulting firms to support the adoption of the new tool. The company is collaborating with Deloitte Touche Ltd., KPMG International Ltd., and Caylent Inc. The role of these partners is to provide guidance and training to life-sciences organizations, helping them to effectively implement Claude for Life Sciences into their existing research and development pipelines and maximize its utility. This collaborative approach is aimed at ensuring a smoother transition for organizations adopting the AI technology. The development of a dedicated life-sciences tool was reportedly inspired by existing user behavior. Kauderer-Abrams, who joined Anthropic a few months prior to the launch, noted that the company was encouraged by observing that many researchers were already using the standard, general-purpose Claude model to assist with their scientific work. This organic adoption prompted the company to build a specialized version of the model, complete with the necessary infrastructure and integrations tailored specifically for the research community's needs, creating a more powerful and fit-for-purpose solution. Claude for Life Sciences is built upon Claude Sonnet 4.5, Anthropic's most powerful large language model. The underlying architecture has been refined to deliver enhanced performance on specific tasks relevant to the scientific field, such as interpreting complex lab protocols and processing other science-related documents. In a demonstration of its capabilities, the company illustrated a scenario where a scientist conducting preclinical studies used the tool to compare two different dosing plans for a new drug. The demonstration showed the scientist pulling data directly from the Benchling platform, using Claude to auto-generate comparison tables, analyze the differences between the two plans, and then update the information back into the original system. Following the data analysis phase of the demonstration, the scientist then instructed Claude for Life Sciences to generate a complete study report suitable for submission to regulators. Anthropic noted that this entire sequence of tasks, which would typically require several days of manual work to compile results and validate the findings, was completed within minutes using the AI tool. This highlights the potential for significant time savings in the documentation and reporting stages of research. Despite the demonstrated efficiency gains, Kauderer-Abrams clarified the limitations of the technology. He pointed out that while AI can accelerate certain aspects of the research process, it cannot speed up the entire drug discovery pipeline. For instance, he specified that it is not possible for artificial intelligence to shorten the duration of clinical trials, which are governed by strict protocols and timelines. The primary benefit of a tool like Claude lies in accelerating the more repetitive and data-intensive components of scientific workflows. These include tasks such as painstaking data analysis, detailed comparisons, and the extensive paperwork required for regulatory compliance. "We're here to make sure this transformation happens and that it's done responsibly," Kauderer-Abrams added, emphasizing the company's focus on proper implementation. Concurrent with the life-sciences announcement, Anthropic released an update for Claude Code, its agentic coding tool. Previously available only through a developer's terminal, the tool is now accessible via the Claude.ai web application and the company's mobile app. This expansion is being released as a "research preview," and initial access is limited to users with Pro and Max subscription accounts. This phased rollout allows the company to gather feedback on the new interface from its more advanced user base before a wider release. The new web and mobile accessibility offers a different way for developers to interact with the coding agent. The interface is designed to be particularly useful for developers who need to run multiple, well-defined coding tasks in parallel. A user can connect the agent to their GitHub repositories, provide instructions for the desired tasks, and then supervise the progress as new code is generated and appears within the web interface. The user interface displays the agent's activity in a sidebar, with a list of assigned tasks shown on the left-hand side of the screen. Anthropic has implemented specific security measures for the new Claude Code interface. Each coding session operates within its own sandboxed environment, isolating it from other processes to enhance security. All interactions with Git repositories are routed through a secure proxy service. This proxy is designed to verify authorization, ensuring that the AI agent can only access repositories for which it has been explicitly granted permission, preventing unauthorized code access or modifications. A new feature called "steering" has also been incorporated into the web and mobile versions of Claude Code. This capability allows a developer to provide guidance to the agent while it is actively working on a problem, without needing to interrupt or stop the ongoing task. This can help refine the agent's output mid-process and can potentially prevent the need to restart a complex task from the beginning if a deviation occurs. It provides a more interactive and dynamic way to manage the AI's coding process. The company described this new operational model as a shift in how developers can leverage AI assistants. "Instead of managing individual coding tasks one at a time, developers can now oversee a fleet of Claude Code instances with confidence they'll finish safely and independently," the company stated. It further elaborated on this paradigm: "It's less about watching Claude work and more about delegating to an entire team -- you assign the work, Claude handles the execution, and you review the results when each task completes." Anthropic reported that it has been using Claude Code extensively for its own internal development. According to the company, the agent has assisted in writing approximately 90% of its own codebase. The internal use of the tool has reportedly led to a productivity increase of around 67% for its engineering team over the last few months. This internal adoption has also translated into commercial success, with Claude Code generating an annual revenue run rate for the company that now exceeds $500 million.