UNC researchers will use artificial intelligence to create vaccines to treat cancer

UNC researchers will use artificial intelligence to create vaccines to treat cancer

Researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill have received $40 million to use artificial intelligence over four years to help create personalized vaccines for those with cancer.

The funding for the project is from the Open AI foundation nonprofit. Open AI is the creator of Chat GPT. UNC's project is called "Generative Immunotherapy."

“The first trial will be in patients with triple-negative breast cancer after surgical removal of the tumor to try and prevent recurrence of the cancer,” said Dr. Benjamin Vincent, ]an associate professor at UNC and co-director on the project. “And the patients who will be enrolled will be at high risk of recurrence, and with no real other therapy proven to reduce their risk of recurrence further.”

This is not the first time researchers as a whole have tried to create a vaccine to treat cancer.

“Just in the past month, there was a phase three trial in melanoma by Moderna that had some sort of positive result that we don't know exactly what,” said Dr. Alex Rubinsteyn, the other co-director on the project. “Personalized cancer vaccines are finally starting to show signs of clinical efficacy, but many fail in the development process because they are too arbitrary.”

The researchers will collect data from 75 people during the next four years of this research. Then use the data to put into a computer to create the personalized vaccines.

“We're deeply profiling cancer patients' tumors to try to improve AI methods to identify the best tumor targets for stimulating the immune system,” said Vincent.

In the future, Vincent said UNC researchers hope to be able to make the vaccines more affordable for people to use, if they find a breakthrough in their research.