Tech giant Anthropic has extended its foray into the life sciences space with a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool, Claude Science, which the company says could offer as a workbench for scientists working in the drug discovery space.
The application, which is available locally on Linux or macOS, as well as through a remote machine, is designed to unify and integrate fragmented tools and databases across the drug discovery workflow to enhance efficiency. It is currently in beta testing.
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By bringing together tools like PubMed, Jupyter and R, Anthropic says Claude Science can help scientists with all stages of their work through a singular platform, meaning they can perform multi-step research and analyse literature, as well as generate and refine figures and scientific artefacts like 3D protein structures for manuscripts within the app.
According to Anthropic, Claude Science comes with more than 60 functions catering to areas like genomics, structural biology, proteomics and cheminformatics, which can assist researchers in performing a broad range of tasks like CRISPR screen design, single-cell RNA sequencing analysis and 3D protein structure rendering, for example.
Anthropic’s Claude Science launch follows the company’s original debut in the life sciences space in October 2025, which saw it release Claude for Life Sciences.
It also comes amid the US’ call to lift its export ban on Anthropic’s advanced AI tools – including Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 – following its prior order to restrict access to its technologies due to national security concerns.
As Anthropic explores the promise of the life sciences sector, it is also firing up an internal drug discovery programme of its own, which will focus on discovering treatments for “neglected” diseases. The company opted to make this move so it could learn from experience how it can most effectively build appropriate tools and models for pharma.
Big tech’s healthcare push
As Anthropic rolls out its life sciences and healthcare offerings, several of its competitors are following a similar tack, with tech giants like OpenAI and Google both debuting their own tools for use by life sciences and healthcare professionals.
With this shift playing out in real time, AI specialists like Anthropic are also increasingly partnering with pharma companies to expand the uptake of such tools, with the tech player inking a collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) to roll out Claude to over 30,000 employees in May 2026.
Meanwhile, OpenAI recently forged pacts with Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Moderna and Sanofi to incorporate its technology into both the companies’ drug discovery and development workflows.
The tightening bond between tech and pharma comes as the latter sector increasingly takes an ‘all in on AI’ approach, with the total value of AI partnerships in the space taking a 120% uptick year-on-year between 2024 and 2025, according to GlobalData’s Pharmaceutical Intelligence Center.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
