Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic will make its Claude model available to drug developers to accelerate medicine development as part of a $200 million agreement with the Gates Foundation.
The four-year deal, which will combine the funds with access to Claude credits and technical support, is primarily focused on global health.
“The largest part of our partnership will focus on improving health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries,” Anthropic said in a press release.
It will create specialised Claude connectors – which give the model access to platforms and tools used in drug development.
These connectors include 10x Genomics, which allows researchers to use natural language to conduct single cell analysis, synapse.org, a data sharing platform, and Scholar Gateway developed by the publisher Wiley.
Our free fornightly briefing on AI in global health includes the latest news updates, our global policy roundup, details of new funding calls, and examples of successful implementation of AI in global health.
Anthropic and the Gates Foundation also aim to work with health ministries and their implementing partners, using Claude to help in detecting new disease outbreaks.
Preeclampsia
One objective of the partnership is to use Claude to support research into diseases such as preeclampsia, polio and HPV.
“Together, we will explore how AI can make it faster and easier for scientists to screen potential vaccine candidates – including vaccines that protect against diseases like polio – computationally before moving into pre-clinical development,” Anthropic said. “This could help shorten the early-stage development timeline.
“A related effort will use Claude to screen for new therapies for HPV and preeclampsia, which cause cervical cancer and dangerous pregnancy disorders, respectively.”
It added that it would be working with the Gates Foundation’s Institute for Disease Modeling to integrate Claude into its operations, making the forecasts for diseases such as TB and malaria more accessible to non-specialists.
The Gates Foundation agreed a $50 million deal earlier this year with OpenAI to reach 1,000 health clinics by 2028, called Horizon1000.
At the time, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in a blog post: “Over the next few years, we will collaborate with leaders in African countries as they pioneer the deployment of AI in health.
“Today’s AI can help save those lives by reaching many more people with much higher-quality care.”
Be the first to comment on "Anthropic, Gates $200m deal to speed up drug discovery"