Anthropic debuts Claude Science, an AI workbench for drug discovery

Anthropic has launched Claude Science, a new AI workbench designed specifically for scientists in drug discovery, genomics, and broader life sciences research. The product is an application that optimizes Anthropic’s existing Claude large language models for use in scientific laboratories, with a strong focus on pharmaceutical research operations and complex biology and chemistry tasks. Claude Science is not a new AI model but a desktop app that combines Claude with local code execution, scientific artifacts, curated databases, connectors, reusable skills, and flexible compute access in a single research environment.

The app is pre-configured with more than 60 scientific databases and tools covering genomics, single-cell studies, proteomics, structural biology, and cheminformatics, enabling workflows such as 3D protein structure prediction, genome browser visualization, single-cell RNA sequencing analysis, CRISPR screen design, and cheminformatics pipelines. A central coordinating agent can create specialist sub-agents, while a dedicated reviewer agent checks citations and calculations to improve reproducibility and error detection. Every artifact—figures, tables, notebooks, and manuscripts—carries provenance data including the code, environment, and conversation history used to generate it, helping scientists audit and reproduce results.

Anthropic is positioning Claude Science squarely at pharma, biotech, and advanced research labs as the primary target market, and has highlighted use cases within pharmaceutical R&D and neglected-disease drug discovery programs. The company is also targeting academic and nonprofit research organizations, offering discounted Team-plan seats for eligible scientific labs and explicitly supporting projects across biomedical research and other scientific domains. Beyond life sciences, Anthropic notes that Claude Science can be used for chemistry, physics, computer science, and general computational research workflows, although launch messaging is heavily focused on biology and healthcare.

Claude Science is available immediately in beta and runs as a desktop app on macOS and Linux, either locally or attached to remote infrastructure via SSH or HPC login nodes. The beta is open to existing Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise customers, with usage counting against their normal plan limits rather than a separate pricing tier. Team and Enterprise users need administrator enablement to access the app. Anthropic is also backing up to 50 Claude Science AI for Science projects with up to $30,000 in credits and additional compute support from Modal, with applications open until July 15, 2026 and projects scheduled to run between September 1 and December 1, 2026. Anthropic stresses that Claude Science is intended as a research tool and is not designed for clinical or diagnostic decision-making.