Tech Entrepreneur designs cancer vaccine for his dog

With the help of AI, Paul Conyngham developed a custom a mRNA cancer vaccine for his dog Rosie.

Without a background in medicine, he convinced researchers in Australia to help him. He paid UNSW for Rosie’s genomic sequencing, then started digging into the DNA results.

He asked ChatGPT to come up with a plan on how to make this work, then AlphaFold, an AI tool from Google’s DeepMind, to find mutated proteins that could be potential targets for treatment.

The nanomedicine medicine pioneer Pall Thordarson, director of UNSW’s RNA Institute, then stepped in and used Conyngham’s data to develop a bespoke mRNA vaccine in less than two months.

This was the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog.

Paul admitted that the red tape took longer then the work to design and deliver the vacinne.

Rosie got her first injection of the cancer treatment in December, and a booster in February. Most of her tumors have already shrunk dramatically. And while they haven’t disappeared, Rosie’s health has improved.

Rosie’s story demonstrates that technology can “democratize” the process of designing personalised cancer vaccines.

SOURCE

Fortune: https://fortune.com/2026/03/15/australian-tech-entrepreneur-ai-cancer-vaccine-dog-rosie-unsw-mrna/

Story on X: https://x.com/gdb/status/2032867435704103006