Anthropic launches Claude Science for pharma researchers

As the US relaxes an export ban on Anthropic's advanced AI tools, the company formally launched Claude Science, an AI 'workbench' for researchers involved in drug discovery.

Claude Science is the first product specifically designed by Anthropic for use by life science researchers, although, it has been talking about a move into the area since last autumn, and there was clear evidence of its progress when it introduced its Claude Fable 5 large language model (LLM) earlier this month, claiming it could accelerate some aspects of drug design tenfold.

The Claude Science app – currently in beta testing – has been launched to allow researchers to use a single research environment to work with dozens of databases, file formats, and analysis tools at "all stages of their work," said Anthropic.

It comes with more than 60 functions built in for areas like genomics, single-cell studies, proteomics, structural biology, and cheminformatics, assisting researchers with tasks like 3D protein structure rendering, analysing genome maps, single-cell RNA sequencing analysis, and CRISPR screen design.

Stephen Francis, an associate professor and epidemiologist at the UCSF Brain Tumour Centre, has used Claude Science in beta to support studies on the molecular epidemiology of glioma, speeding up the analysis of how genetic variants combine to shape individual susceptibility to this form of brain cancer. The analyses can be completed in around a tenth of the time it previously took.

"After months of beta testing Claude Science, I'm convinced," said Francis. "This tool is going to accelerate scientific discovery in a big way."

Anthropic said it is making the beta version available early "so scientists can start to use it on real problems and tell us how to refine it," and is offering use credits worth up to $30,000 and funding for projects that "span domains and explore the boundaries of science, with an early focus on biology and biomedical research." Applications for the support are open until 15th July.

The company lies at the heart of the debate around the safety of AI, and a few weeks ago the US federal government imposed export controls on Anthropic's main Mythos and Fable AI models built on Claude.

The US government said it has found a way to 'jailbreak' safety measures in the AIs to prevent them from being used for nefarious purposes, such as launching cyberattacks or developing new biological or chemical weapons.

Now, Anthropic says the export ban has been lifted, amid reports that it has developed additional guardrails for the technologies that have alleviated the government's concerns.

Claude is striving to break into the pharma category with rival AIs like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, which have also launched dedicated tools for life science researchers.

Claude Science arrives alongside other tools from Anthropic like Claude for Healthcare, a suite of AI tools for health systems, payers, and patients.