Heartbroken when his fur-baby was diagnosed with a deadly mast cell cancer in 2024, Mr Conyngham threw thousands of dollars at veterinary chemotherapy and surgery, which slowed but failed to shrink the tumours. Now, after treatment with a custom mRNA cancer vaccine over the Christmas break, the tennis ball-sized tumour on Rosie’s hock has shrunk in half, in a recovery that has astounded researchers at the cutting-edge of human cancer treatments.
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Harnessing some of Australia’s most sought-after scientists to manufacture the vaccine in laboratories at the University of NSW, he then tracked down the only veterinary researcher with ethics approval to administer the experimental drug.
It was ChatGPT that suggested immunotherapy, pointing Mr Conyngham to the UNSW Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics, where Associate Professor Smith still remembers the “weird” request. “We often get oddball queries, and this one was coming from a private individual looking to sequence his dog,’’ he recalls. “DNA sequencing is a way to profile the tumour and identify mutations that might be causing the disease.’’
The renowned researcher was reticent. “Usually we don’t support direct-to-consumer type DNA sequencing because while generating data for genomics is relatively easy for us, interrogating that data is really hard and challenging,’’ he said. “But Paul said, ‘No worries, I’m a data analyst and I’ll figure this out with the help of ChatGPT’.”
With 17 years of experience in machine learning and data analysis, Mr Conyngham is an AI pioneer – an electrical and computing engineer who co-founded Core Intelligence Technologies, and was a director for the Data Science and AI Association of Australia. Once UNSW handed him the genomic sequencing, for which he paid $3000, he got cracking to decipher the data.
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At the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics, Associate Professor Smith was gobsmacked that this puppy lover with no background in biology had cracked the code. “Paul was relentless,’’ he said. “He called and told me he had analysed the data and found mutations of interest and then used AlphaFold (an AI program) to find the proteins that were mutated, and then identified potential targets and matched them to drugs, and he was wondering could I help him find someone to synthesise this compound that he’d identified. I’m like, ‘Woah, that’s crazy!’ I was motivated by his enthusiasm.’’
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“This is the first time a personalised cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog,’’ Professor Thordarson said. “This is still at the frontier of where cancer immunotherapeutics are – and ultimately, we’re going to use this for helping humans. What Rosie is teaching us is that personalised medicine can be very effective, and done in a time-sensitive manner, with mRNA technology.’’
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Rosie’s vaccine was ready, but Mr Conyngham still needed ethics approval to use it.
“I had to do everything by the book because you can’t just willy-nilly create a vaccine in Australia,’’ he said. “The red tape was actually harder than the vaccine creation, and I was trying to get an Australian ethics approval to run a drug trial on Rosie. It took me three months, putting two hours aside every single night just typing up this 100-page document. But there was a second intervention of fate.’’
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Rosie’s response has inspired David Thomas, inaugural director of the UNSW Centre for Molecular Oncology, who is working on similar mRNA treatments for human patients.
“The striking thing about this is the idea of citizen science, where a punter in the street, with a computer science background, can use their skills in the scientific process,’’ Professor Thomas said. “That’s a very impressive thing.’’
Rosie’s recovery has been a howling success, with most of her tumours appear to melt away in a matter of weeks. “In December she had low energy because the tumours were creating a huge burden for her,’’ Mr Conyngham said. “Six weeks post-treatment, I was at the dog park when she spotted a rabbit and jumped the fence to chase it. I’m under no illusion that this is a cure, but I do believe this treatment has bought Rosie significantly more time and quality of life.’’
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