Anthropic is launching its own drug discovery programs for neglected diseases.
The company plans to research treatments for diseases that traditional pharma and biotech firms consider unprofitable, focusing on early, preclinical-stage drug development. Anthropic says the move aligns with its nonprofit mission and will help it build better AI models and tools for the broader industry through firsthand experience. The announcement (1:08:34) came during an event for the company's new science AI tool "Claude Science".
The event also featured early examples of how AI could speed up medical research. A researcher at UCSF used Claude Science to spot a viral contamination in minutes that his team had missed for an entire year, according to Anthropic. The company also says Claude analyzed 100 rare genetic diseases in under an hour and flagged 32 candidates for computational screening.
Small gains, massive impact
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said that getting a finished drug candidate from development to approval currently takes about twelve years. He broke the delays into three categories: information latency, operational latency, and biological latency.
