Anthropic buys Mithril Medicine, a one-person biotech that took a muscular dystrophy antibody to mouse proof of principle with Claude

Anthropic disclosed it has acquired Mithril Medicine, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech whose founder Cody Tranbarger was its only full-time employee; terms were not disclosed and R&D World reports the deal closed in July. Tranbarger used Claude to coordinate contracts, logistics and experiments with 11 outside labs plus part-time consultants, taking a bispecific antibody for LAMA2-related congenital muscular dystrophy from idea to promising (not yet peer-reviewed, non-randomised) mouse results in under 18 months. The programmes become Anthropic's first in-house drug work, with human trials possible from late 2028. Anthropic also reported results from Claude partnerships with Generate Biomedicines, Divergence Labs, BigHat Biosciences, Enveda, The Column Group and Bristol Myers Squibb.