In 2024, Sydney tech entrepreneur Paul Conyngham found out his dog Rosie had cancer. But after attacking the diagnosis with chemotherapy and surgery, the tumors persisted and Rosie got sicker.<\/p>\n
So he turned to AI and eventually developed\u00a0a custom\u00a0a mRNA cancer vaccine with the help of Australian scientists. Most of Rosie\u2019s tumors have shrunk, and the dog is back chasing rabbits. <\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT suggested immunotherapy and directed Conyngham to the University of New South Wales Ramaciotti Center for Genomics, according to a report in the Australian<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Conyngham doesn\u2019t have a background in medicine, he is an electrical and computing engineer who cofounded Core Intelligence Technologies. He was also a director for the Data Science and AI Association of Australia.<\/p>\n After reaching out to university, he convinced researchers there to help him and paid UNSW for Rosie\u2019s genomic sequencing. Then he started digging into the DNA. <\/p>\n \u201cI went to ChatGPT and came up with a plan on how to do this,\u201d Conyngham told the Australian.<\/p>\n He also used AlphaFold, an AI tool from Google\u2019s DeepMind<\/a>, to find mutated proteins that could be potential targets for treatment. While an immunotherapy treatment that looked like a good fit for Rosie was identified, the drugmaker wouldn\u2019t provide it.<\/p>\n Then nanomedicine medicine pioneer Pall Thordarson, director of UNSW\u2019s RNA Institute, stepped in and used Conyngham\u2019s data to develop a bespoke mRNA vaccine in less than two months.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog,\u201d he told the Australian. \u201cThis is still at the frontier of where cancer immunotherapeutics are\u2014and ultimately, we\u2019re going to use this for helping humans. What Rosie is teaching us is that personalized medicine can be very effective, and done in a time-sensitive manner, with mRNA technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosie got her first injection of the cancer treatment this past December, then received a booster in February. Most of her tumors have already shrunk dramatically. And while they haven\u2019t disappeared, Rosie\u2019s health has improved. <\/p>\n