An AI agent successfully controlled robotic equipment to perform a brain injection on a living mouse, according to Gabriel Ocana Santero, CEO of biotech startup Exin Therapeutics. The experiment demonstrates AI systems moving beyond analyzing data to directly operating laboratory equipment.
Santero told Wired his team connected an AI agent to a custom surgical rig designed for mouse brain injections. The setup included a motorized device to immobilize the mouse, a camera for observation, and controls for an injection needle. The team was testing a gene therapy aimed at reducing seizures in a mouse with epilepsy.
A veterinary surgeon first performed a craniotomy on the mouse while the AI agent observed. The agent then selected a treatment from 19 options in a spreadsheet, chose the brain region and injection coordinates, and controlled the robotic arms and injector needle, including parameters such as volume and speed.
The team initially tested Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 model, but that model refused to guide the needle into the mouse’s brain, citing concern that stopping midway could endanger the animal. According to the Wired report, the model “did the experimental planning, but when it was time to inject, he said, ‘something on my output is telling me I sho’“—the excerpt ends mid-sentence.
Santero said connecting AI agents to laboratory equipment could provide more value than having them only design experiments or analyze results. “We’ve realized that we need to connect these agents to a lab to get the maximum value from them,” he told Wired. He explained that AI models trained primarily on published scientific literature may miss information about failed experiments, unexpected observations, and real-time decisions that scientists make during research.
Exin Therapeutics, based in San Francisco, uses AI to analyze brain activity to develop drugs for epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases. Santero posted about the experiment on social media, according to Wired.