Anthropic builds biology lab for AI drug research

Anthropic has opened a physical biology lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it will run hands-on experiments as the AI company moves beyond computer-based modeling and deeper into drug research. Its head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed the lab to Reuters. The research will focus on diseases that the pharmaceutical industry has largely ignored.

Kauderer-Abrams told Reuters during an interview that the lab is already up and running making the existence of the lab public for the first time, and that Anthropic still sees real lab work as essential to testing biology. He confirmed that the company was “absolutely” doing that today.

A spokesperson told CNBC that the facility was not set up specifically for drug discovery but declined to provide further details, according to Quartz.

Anthropic targets unappealing diseases

Anthropic is targeting an area of medicine and drug research that has traditionally been less attractive to drugmakers. Kauderer-Abrams discussed the plan for the very first time at a June gathering in San Francisco, where he claimed Anthropic would focus on early-stage research in areas that established drugmakers had largely overlooked because they offered little financial incentive.

The company sees AI as a way to speed up treatments for conditions that have long been considered too difficult to tackle, including complex therapies. The work could include bispecific and trispecific antibodies, which are designed to bind to more than one site on a protein or cell. Anthropic has not identified a specific disease it is targeting or disclosed any drug candidate from the research.

Anthropic is also drawing a clear line between its research and the business of bringing drugs to market. “We’re not competing with pharma and biotech companies that make their business in bringing drugs to market,” Kauderer-Abrams told Reuters. The company is not running clinical trials yet, and any treatment resulting from its research would still need to undergo preclinical testing, human trials and regulatory review.

Robots, Claude, and a growing division

Another part of the experiment is testing if Claude can completely run the lab autonomously. Anthropic is exploring whether its models can direct robotic systems to carry out experiments with minimal staffing, according to Quartz.

Kauderer-Abrams described the work as still being in its early stages, saying the company is “in the very early innings of using AI to automate the execution of lab work.” A spokesperson also stressed that human oversight remains a safety requirement.

Anthropic launched Claude Science, a research workbench that connects to more than 60 scientific databases covering genomics, proteomics and structural biology. It also added Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan to its board and acquired startup Coefficient Bio for about $400 million in stock.

In August, Anthropic introduced a Model Hardware Standard designed to help AI systems communicate with lab equipment. It has also been building partnerships across the pharmaceutical industry, including a deal with Novo Nordisk this week, access to Claude for Bristol-Myers Squibb staff and AI services supplied to Roche’s Genentech. Kauderer-Abrams said life sciences has become one of the company’s most heavily staffed and resourced units.

The biology lab opening is coming after recent warnings from Anthropic about the risks posed by increasingly capable AI, with CEO Dario Amodei recently called for a slowdown in advanced AI development to reduce the risk of losing control over frontier systems. The company has said in recent weeks that advanced AI could carry serious risks, including the possibility that its systems could be used to help develop biological weapons.

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