Anthropic Acquires Mithril Medicine to Expand Drug Discovery Work

Anthropic has acquired Mithril Medicine, adding two muscular dystrophy research programs to the AI company’s drug-discovery work. Mithril founder Cody Tranbarger has joined Anthropic and is continuing the research there.

Mithril was a one-person biotech developing treatments for two rare forms of muscular dystrophy. Claude helped Tranbarger organize contracts, logistics and experiments involving 11 outside labs, as well as handle other operational work.

A potential treatment for LAMA2-related congenital muscular dystrophy moved from an idea to promising results in mice in less than 18 months.

Anthropic has also spent several months working with six drug-development organizations: BigHat Biosciences, Bristol Myers Squibb, Divergence Labs, Enveda, Generate Biomedicines and The Column Group. The company plans to expand that work.

Anthropic described its broader drug-development research as mostly preclinical, with most of the work not yet at the human-testing stage. It expects a drug could be ready to begin human clinical trials as soon as late 2028, if the candidates continue to hold up.