Anthropic Opens Bay Area Wet Lab Powered by Claude for Biology Research

It is unclear what research projects the lab will pursue. In June, Anthropic launched an effort to develop drugs for diseases the pharmaceutical sector is not prioritizing. A company spokesperson told Reuters the new Bay Area lab is “not for drug discovery specifically.” That suggests the facility will also pursue research in other subfields of biology.

Many drugs neutralize disease cells by disabling one of their constituent proteins. To disable a harmful protein, researchers must find a way to attach medicine to it. That task usually is performed by molecules called high-affinity binders. Ahead of the release of Claude Mythos 5.1 earlier this month, Anthropic evaluated the model’s ability to develop such binders. The model generated 12 candidate molecules during the test. Anthropic says the molecules’ hit rate, a measure of their therapeutic potential, was 50%, while protein design projects usually achieve a hit rate of 10% to 15%.

Anthropic’s plan to use Claude to control robots at the new lab points to the facility’s use of the Model Hardware Standard, or MHS. The protocol enables Claude to control lab equipment. AI models can also use MHS to spot experiment errors, fix them and write hardware automation scripts. Mapping out a new biological phenomenon often requires researchers to analyze it with several different lab instruments, and those machines must carry out their work in a specific order. Researchers usually manually write scripts to coordinate which instrument should perform what action and when. MHS simplifies that task to the point it can be performed reliably by Claude.

According to Reuters, Anthropic plans to entrust some lab work to external partners. The company developed its MHS protocol in partnership with HHMI, a Virginia-based medical research center. In August, Anthropic stated that the institute is one of several organizations testing ways of using MHS-powered Claude workflows to control lab equipment.

Anthropic told Reuters it is not “competing with pharma and biotech companies.” That suggests the company may plan to license Claude’s discoveries to pharmaceutical companies instead of bringing them to market on its own. Developing a new drug takes billions of dollars and more than a decade of work. Offloading some of that work to external partners could simplify Anthropic’s life sciences push.