Tech boss uses AI and ChatGPT to make his dog a cancer vaccine

https://www.thestreet.com/health/tech-boss-uses-ai-and-chatgpt-to-make-his-dog-a-cancer-vaccine
 

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Key Points
o A desperate dog owner did something with AI that no one had ever done before.
o The results left the scientists who helped him completely speechless.
o Now researchers are asking whether the same approach could work for humans.

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Paul Conyngham is not a doctor. He has no background in biology or oncology. What he does have is 17 years of machine learning experience and a rescue dog named Rosie he was not willing to give up on.
 

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My dogs gotta be well done!

I can't read the first message's link. The site blocks me from seeing it.

Ok,  I'll copy the pertinent parts.

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When conventional treatment failed to stop the aggressive mast cell cancer spreading through Rosie’s hind leg in 2024, Conyngham did what any data engineer would do. He opened ChatGPT and started asking questions.

What followed became a world first. Working with researchers at two Australian universities, Conyngham designed a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for Rosie using AI tools available to anyone. The tumor on her leg shrank by 75%. Scientists who helped make it happen say they were stunned.

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The diagnosis was mast cell cancer, the most common skin cancer in dogs. Vets gave her between one and six months to live. Conyngham spent tens of thousands of dollars on chemotherapy and multiple surgeries. The tumors slowed but refused to retreat.

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Conyngham used ChatGPT as a research assistant, not a replacement for scientists. The chatbot pointed him toward genomic sequencing and suggested he contact the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics at the University of New South Wales.

He paid $3,000 AUD to have Rosie’s DNA sequenced, comparing her healthy cells to her tumor cells to pinpoint exactly where mutations had taken hold. He then ran that data through Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold, the protein structure prediction tool that won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024, to model the three-dimensional shapes of the proteins produced by those mutations.

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From those models, he identified the neoantigens most likely to trigger a meaningful immune response. Months of analysis were condensed into half a page of formulas.

Professor Páll Thordarson, director of the UNSW RNA Institute, took Conyngham’s half-page formula and built the mRNA vaccine. It was the first personalized cancer vaccine ever made for a dog.

Conyngham drove 10 hours to Gatton, Queensland, in December 2025 for Rosie’s first injection. He returned for a booster in January 2026. One week after the first shot, the tumor began visibly shrinking.

By January, Rosie had regained enough energy to jump a fence at the dog park chasing a rabbit. In December, she had barely been able to move.

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“It was like holy word not allowed, it worked,” Smith said. “It raises the question, if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to all humans with cancer?”

Thordarson was equally candid about what the case demonstrates. “What Rosie is teaching us is that personalized medicine can be very effective and done in a time-sensitive manner with mRNA technology,” he said, as Awesome Agents reported.

But researchers are careful to note that this is one dog, one tumor, with no controlled trial. Mast cell tumors can sometimes shrink spontaneously. Human trials would require years of regulatory work and hundreds of millions of dollars in testing. Conyngham himself is clear-eyed about the limits.

“I’m under no illusion that this is a cure,” he said. “But I do believe this treatment has bought Rosie significantly more time and quality of life.”

Companies including Moderna are already working on personalized mRNA cancer vaccines for humans. What Rosie’s case demonstrates is that the pipeline — sequence the tumor, model the mutations, design a targeted mRNA vaccine — can be compressed from years into months using AI tools that are freely available today.

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Conyngham is already designing a second vaccine for a tumor that did not respond to the first treatment. He is also working with everyone involved to explore how other dog owners might access the same process.

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