News Desk
SYDENY: An experimental cancer treatment using an mRNA vaccine, which was developed with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is offering hope to humans after a successful run with a dog with cancer in Sydney, The Australian reported on Friday.
Rosie — an eight-year-old rescue dog — was adopted by Sydney-based tech entrepreneur Paul Conyngham in 2019. She was diagnosed with a deadly mast cell cancer in 2024.
After showing no improvement following the initial treatment, Conyngham turned to a chatbot to brainstorm ideas for her treatment, which led to him partnering with elite medical scientists to find a cure.
The vaccine produced in the result, which Rosie was given over the Christmas break in 2025, caused one of her tumours to shrink by half.
According to The Australian, “the recovery has astounded researchers at the cutting-edge of human cancer treatments”.
Martin Smith, an associate professor of computational biology and director of the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics at the University of NSW, where a team of scientists worked on the vaccine, recalled the development, saying, “It was like holy crap, it worked!’
“It raises the question, if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to all humans with cancer? It gives hope to a lot of people, and it’s something we’re passionate about trying to chase up here.’’
According to The Australian, Conyngham “used a chatbot to brainstorm possible cures for Rosie’s cancer — then harnessed artificial intelligence to process gigabytes of genetic data to create the blueprint for an mRNA vaccine”.
Conyngham has 17-years of experience in machine learning and data analysis.
Conyngham then went to Australia’s “most sought-after” scientists. ChatGPT pointed Conyngham to the UNSW’s genomics centre, where he asked them to “DNA sequence his dog”.
