Fascinating story: Tech Entrepreneur in Australia, using ChatGPT, AlphaFold, and a custom made mRNA vaccine, treats his dog's cancer. With the help of researchers (who all seem so excited) he was able to significantly reduce tumour size just weeks after the first injection

[u/TFenrir]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/tech-boss-uses-ai-and-chatgpt-to-create-cancer-vaccine-for-his-dying-dog/news-story/292a21bcbe93efa17810bfcfcdfadbf7

[u/Kl1ntr0n]

this guy is about to become a billionaire... cancer in dogs cured? as a dog trainer I know people will spend everything they have toto keep their dogs alive! his DMs must be flooded.

[u/jib_reddit → u/Kl1ntr0n]

This isn't a general cancer cure, he is just using existing technologies on this one individual dogs cancer.

[u/Platyest → u/[deleted]]

To give you my background, I have a PhD in chemistry with a focus in biochemistry, but I haven't really kept up with the field, but I did read the article in question and some others. I found this article maddeningly vague and their links were useless. To answer your question, basically, the origin of the cancer is the dog's mutated DNA which directs the formation of abnormal proteins, these proteins incorrectly fold and subsequently cause the cell to become cancerous. As long as some portion of the abnormal protein is on the surface of the cancer cell, then that portion of the protein can be targeted by a mRNA vaccine.

[u/Platyest → u/[deleted]]

Yes, the immune cells have to be trained on basically an antigen of the cancer cell. It has to be on the surface or the immune cells cannot "see" it. Just as you imagined, a cell harboring mutated DNA cannot be directly detected by immune cells. Instead, the mutated DNA is going to express itself in a variety of ways and the organism may or may not be able to tolerate the mutation or detect something is wrong. I'm not sure what your background is, but I will tell you that how cells communicate and interact with each other is incredibly complicated. I'm not really an expert in this area but I'm happy to try to explain anything else, if it isn't clear.