Australian Paul Cunningham independently “invented” an mRNA vaccine for his dog Rosie when he learned that her malignant tumors were not responding to standard immunotherapy and other treatments. Australian publication that He said About this story, he particularly emphasizes that the IT entrepreneur was inspired to try to help his pet on his own through conversations with ChatGPT. The chatbot is said to have helped Cunningham, who knew little about biology, understand exactly what needed to be done to have a personalized mRNA-based genetic makeup. After that, the animal’s owner contacted a number of scientists from different research centers, who eventually manufactured a vaccine and administered it to Rosie. According to Al-Malik, within six weeks of starting the vaccine, the size of the tumors decreased significantly, which can be considered a great success, even if it is not a cure. Paul Cunningham is now busy creating a new version of his vaccine that could help Rosie treat her remaining resistant tumors.
Paul Cunningham is an IT entrepreneur with an engineering background, co-founder of Core Intelligence Technologies and a director of the Australian Society for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Rosie appeared with him in 2019, just before the outbreak of the Corona virus pandemic. Multiple tumors (the histological type of tumors were not determined by The Australian) were discovered in the dog in 2024, and as a result she had to undergo several courses of chemotherapy and surgery. All this did not bring the expected result – according to the owner, veterinarians expected that the dog would be able to live for another one to six months, but the disease would take its toll anyway.
At that point, Cunningham turned to ChatGPT in hopes of brainstorming other cancer treatment options, and that’s how he discovered the concept of mRNA therapeutic vaccines. Such vaccines have been in development for several decades, but work on them received significant momentum after the creation and approval of mRNA vaccines against Covid. For example, the German company BioNTech, which gained fame with the advent of the pandemic, was created specifically to research the possibilities of such vaccines and was working on them even before Covid made this technology extraordinarily in demand.
The idea behind therapeutic cancer vaccines is that the immune system can be artificially helped to recognize cells that have become cancerous. This is based on the concept of neoantigens – features of malignant cells that arise spontaneously in their genome as a result of mutations and distinguish cancer cells from those of the rest of the body. Since the emergence of new antigens is a random process, each tumor has its own group of them; It is very difficult to create a global collection of new antigens, and thus a universal vaccine. To determine which genetic combinations should be included in the vaccine, you need to know what variations this tumor acquired during its malignant degeneration. This requires a personal approach.
The creation of de novo vaccines usually follows the following scheme. Researchers take a biopsy of the tumor and healthy tissue, perform complete DNA sequencing of the resulting samples and analyze the sequences to see if they differ from each other (normally, these differences should be minimal – after all, all cells of the same organism are copies of each other).
The unique tumor sequences detected in this way are collected in a long list – and an attempt is made to sort them in such a way as to find the most immunogenic sequences. In other words, those that will be able to give a strong immune response and stimulate the cytotoxic activity of lymphocytes to the greatest extent. Unlike direct searching for mutations, this sorting is very difficult, because there are no simple, clear rules governing immunity – and here researchers are often forced to rely on trial and error. The method of selecting a small number of antigens that can be included in a vaccine is the most science-intensive part of the process of creating it.
However, Cunningham realized that the search for neoantigens to create a potential vaccine begins with sequencing the tumor. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) helped him do this. Mr Martin Smithwho eventually supported Cunningham’s initiative, was initially cool toward it. “We don’t typically support direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing services, because even though it’s relatively easy for us to get genomic data, it’s really complex and difficult to analyze,” The Australian quoted him as saying. “But Paul said: ‘Don’t worry, I’m a data analyst and I’ll figure it out with ChatGPT.’ According to the publication, Rosie’s tumor sequence cost the owner $3,000.
After Cunningham obtained the sequences, he began searching them for possible new clones. Using ChatGPT and the AlphaFold program (which predicts the 3D structure of proteins based on their sequences), he found several suitable designs that could become the basis for a vaccine. With them, he turned to another researcher from the University of New South Wales – a chemist To Paul ThordarsonDirector of the RNA Institute at this Australian university. With its help, it was possible to assemble the necessary mRNA sequences and obtain the final drug.
As The Australian newspaper wrote, after all this had been successfully accomplished, a problem arose that could put an end to all the efforts of Rosie’s owner, namely obtaining permission from the ethical committee to use the drug that had been created in this unusual way. In all, it took about three months, but eventually, Cunningham, with the help of another research group, this time from the United States, was able to obtain approval and begin injections.
The first was carried out in December, followed by a booster vaccination with a one-month pause, and another vaccination is scheduled for the near future. Pictures that Lead The Australian and Cunningham on his LinkedIn profile, He bears witness About significant progress – the size of the tumors visually decreased by half in some cases. It is not yet known how the disease will develop further – perhaps the tumor will adapt to the immune response due to genetic plasticity, in which case the disease will return. However, Cunningham is already preparing a second version of the vaccines based on the sequences of those tumors that responded worse to treatment.