Anthropic opens a Bay Area wet lab for hands-on biology research

Anthropic is also drawing a line before human trials. Kauderer-Abrams said the company is focused on preclinical work and is not running clinical trials for now. He said Anthropic does not intend to compete with pharmaceutical and biotech companies whose business is bringing medicines to market.

More access to Claude, with more scrutiny

The physical lab arrives alongside a broader push to make Claude useful for professional biology. On Sept. 17, Anthropic launched a beta Life Sciences Verification Program for qualified teams and institutions. Standard grants give verified researchers access to models with less restrictive biology safeguards, while separate, project-specific grants are required for higher-risk work.

Anthropic says it reviews applicants' research credentials, security practices and ethical oversight, then monitors use against the scope each organization declared. That framework reflects a basic tension in the company's biology strategy: the same models that can help researchers analyze experiments or design candidates may also provide dangerous assistance if access is misused.

The company has been studying that risk in physical settings for years. Anthropic said a small 2024 wet-lab pilot involving eight participants found no evidence that Claude improved performance on basic laboratory protocols, though the study was too small to settle the question. Its new lab is a commercial research operation rather than that safety trial, but both efforts put Anthropic closer to the point where AI-generated ideas have to survive contact with actual biology.