Researchers led by Kexin Huang report the development of a general-purpose biomedical artificial intelligence agent that can autonomously perform a range of research tasks. The authors tested their tool in various case studies, where it showed strong performance, and they say their results point “toward a future in which AI agents work alongside human researchers to accelerate biomedical discovery from basic research to translation.” Biomedical research drives discoveries in disease mechanisms, diagnostics, and therapeutics, but increasingly complex workflows, expanding datasets, specialized tools, and a rapidly growing literature make it difficult to fully leverage available knowledge and resources. As a result, valuable data and analytical opportunities often go underused because the demand for expert researchers exceeds the available workforce. This underscores the need for approaches that can scale expertise and accelerate discovery. The development of AI agents offers opportunities to reshape aspects of biomedical research, particularly if such tools could handle a broad range of biomedical tasks.
Here, Huang and colleagues introduce Biomni, an AI agent that mines biomedical literature to define comprehensive “action spaces.” The large language model also acts as the planning engine, interpreting a user request and preparing a multi-step series of sub-tasks to satisfy that request. In doing so, Biomni can compose and execute workflows without pre-set templates. The authors tested Biomni against a variety of biomedical benchmarks. They also evaluated how it performed compared to humans across several tasks, finding Biomni consistently matched expert accuracy while requiring substantially less time. They also tested the tool in five case studies ranging from analyzing wearable sensor data to designing laboratory protocols to assist wet-lab researchers. The authors note that while Biomni’s environment spans a wide range of biomedical tools and databases, “the evaluated tasks represent only a subset of the field, and key domains remain unexplored.” Even so, they say, by automating complex workflows, “Biomni enables researchers to redirect their efforts toward creative hypothesis generation, experimental innovation, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.”
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Science
Autonomous biomedical research with an artificial intelligence agent
9-Jul-2026