
New Delhi: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help develop a customised vaccine against cancer for an individual in just 48 hours, said Oracle chairman Larry Ellison.
At the launch of the Stargate Project in the White House, Ellison said that advancements in AI could revolutionise healthcare and declared that AI will soon design personalised mRNA vaccines for every individual to fight cancer, which can be produced by robotic systems.
He said that since little fragments of tumor float in the blood, AI can help detect the cancer early. Then, with the help of gene sequencing via a simple blood test, a vaccine can be developed to fight against that cancer.
“Little fragments of those tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test. Once we gene sequence that cancer tumour, we can then vaccinate the person. The design of the vaccine for every individual to vaccinate them against that cancer,” he explained.
Ellison added, “You can make that mRNA vaccine, robotically and using AI in 48 hours. So imagine early cancer detection, the development of a vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you and have that vaccine in 48 hours – this is the promise of AI.”
President Donald Trump announced an investment of $100 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US, funded through a joint venture called the Stargate Project, with the aim of increasing it to $500 billion over the course of four years.
The initial equity funders are SoftBank, OpenAI, and MGX, with SoftBank and OpenAI as the lead partners for Stargate. Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI are the project’s “key initial technology partners.”
What is an mRNA vaccine?
An mRNA vaccine uses a small fragment of messenger RNA (a molecule that carries specific instructions from DNA) to instruct the body’s cells to produce a specific protein, triggering an immune response.
This helps the immune system to recognise and attack the cancer cells, teaching the body to target the disease. These vaccines are safe, and can be rapidly developed.