From the carousel · 28 Oct 2026

Mithril: idea to mice in under 18 months

Plus 6 more companies using Claude in drug development.

Source one: Anthropic's report of 27 October 2026.

Source two: Mithril's technical report of 26 October 2026.

1. Mithril Medicine

Founder Cody Tranbarger was its 1 full-time employee, with 8 paid advisers, plus contract research labs. Anthropic bought Mithril in July 2026. Mithril works on LAMA2-related congenital muscular dystrophy and alpha-dystroglycanopathy.

Claude helped coordinate 11 outside labs. People made the calls: in the week the technical report analyzes, Claude drafted 17 emails, people edited and sent 12, and Claude sent none.

In under 18 months, one program went from idea to a mouse result. Seven treated mice had about twice the peak force and grip strength of four untreated. The study was not randomized or blinded, and the result has not been repeated.

The technical report is not peer reviewed. It examines 6 Claude errors, and at least 3 reached a lab in emails people had edited and sent.

Of 42 children, 1 walked unaided

LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy leaves children weak from birth or early infancy, and the technical report says no treatment changes its course. In a London study of 42 children completely missing laminin-α2, 1 walked unaided. Human trials of Mithril's drug could start in late 2028 at the earliest, if it keeps holding up.

2. Generate Biomedicines

Six Generate scientists used Claude Code to propose new designs for part of a CAR T-cell therapy. One design was about 70% shorter than the standard version, and in lab tests it was more effective. It allowed immune cells to make roughly 10 times as many receptors.

3. Divergence Labs

Divergence is developing a new way to treat food allergies. Claude helped produce about 35,000 antibody designs in about a month. In early tests, 20 designs could dislodge IgE, the antibody behind allergic reactions, and 3 appeared to do it better than the standard medication.

4. BigHat Biosciences

Claude, connected to BigHat's lab data, proposed changes to each starting antibody. BigHat's lab made and tested about 1,010 variants in about 10 weeks. Compared with the originals, the best versions bound more than 10 times as tightly.

5. Enveda

Enveda connected its manufacturing documents to Claude. Across 1,061 pages, Claude caught all 11 issues human reviewers had spotted and flagged 7 they had missed. Human review time fell 89%, from over 25 hours to less than 3 hours.

6. The Column Group

The Column Group is setting up Pleiades, a company that will run many drug programs with Claude. Its first Claude skill judges whether a drug target is worth pursuing. It has been evaluated on 45 target and disease pairs.

7. Bristol Myers Squibb

BMS uses Claude to assess clinical-trial plans for an early-stage drug and to estimate how likely those trials are to succeed. Anthropic's report gives no results.

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— Champ