Anthropic is expanding its AI for Science program with a focused call for rare genetic disease research. Accepted applicants receive up to $50,000 in Claude API credits over six months, with the goal of building a community of researchers using AI to reshape understanding of rare diseases. The call is structured around two tracks: one for basic science partnerships and another for early-stage biotechs.

Rare disease research faces unique challenges: small patient populations, scattered data, and siloed disease definitions. The article notes that over 7,000 rare diseases exist, each often studied in isolation, making it hard to spot shared mechanisms. AI can help by modeling rare diseases, detecting patterns across them, and synthesizing literature. The program aims to build a community of researchers using AI to address these issues.

The first track focuses on basic science partnerships, collaborating with the Monarch Initiative, which develops the Mondo Disease Ontology and the Monarch Knowledge Graph. A new tool, DisMech, is a mechanistic disease classification library where Claude can read case reports and variant databases to identify mechanistic similarities between diseases. Grantees are encouraged to use and contribute to these resources. Outputs from this track will be made publicly available.

The second track supports early-stage biotechs aiming to compress drug development timelines. The article highlights bottlenecks: waiting for manufacturing slots, sequential safety studies, and hand-assembling regulatory documentation. Claude can help with drafting regulatory dossiers, analyzing drug target druggability across modalities, and identifying shared mechanisms for basket trials. Examples of existing grantees include Every Cure (drug repurposing), Centre for Population Genomics (variant classification), and Violet Research Institute (ultra-rare disease research).

The article acknowledges AI’s limitations: it cannot help where data is too sparse or poorly organized, and it cannot address diagnostic access issues like insurance authorization. The program is accepting applications through August 2, 2026. Examples of eligible projects are provided for each track, such as proposing mechanistic links between rare diseases or justifying starting doses from sparse data. The goal is to extend AI benefits to areas that market forces might neglect.