All it takes is one headline, catalyst, or moment to ignite a theme.
Did Moderna complete the first step in finding a cure for cancer with the help of AI?
Maybe.
That remains to be seen and curing cancer is a big and difficult feat. I’m very skeptical, but I’m open minded to anything that could potentially help in fighting cancer.
There’s hundreds of different cancers with different mutations and responses to treatment so a single blanket “cure” is unlikely.
But it’s been a long time since we’ve heard about something genuinely “new” that could change the way we fight this disease.
For the first time ever an individualized mRNA cancer therapy successfully produced positive results in a Phase 3 trial. This is the final major stage of clinical testing before a drug can be submitted for approval.
Instead of giving every cancer patient the exact same drug, Moderna essentially builds a vaccine specifically for an individual patient’s cancer.
When a patient’s tumor is surgically removed, doctors take a sample and sequence its DNA to identify mutations unique to that cancer. Moderna then uses those mutations to create a personalized treatment containing instructions.
Once injected the goal is to show the immune system exactly what that patient’s cancer looks like and train T cells to recognize and attack cells carrying those mutations.
Moderna is trying to give your immune system a better picture of exactly what it needs to hunt down and kill.
The most notable part of this entire story is that AI played a direct role in creating the personalized cancer treatment.
Moderna says a series of fully integrated AI algorithms analyzed the sequencing data and predicted which neoantigens were most likely to generate an immune response. The system then selected as many as 34 targets to include in that person’s treatment.
So AI was essentially helping answer the question of out of everything abnormal about this patient’s cancer, which 34 targets give the immune system the best chance of recognizing and attacking it?
Those AI selected targets were then encoded into a custom strand of mRNA and manufactured into a treatment specifically for that patient. Basically, AI helped design the treatment.
And this was likely the first domino to fall.
There’s much more to come as AI accelerates the development of treatments and cures for major diseases. AI in healthcare will be one of the defining themes and most consequential breakthroughs of this era.
And there’s likely a big opportunity to profit as market participants.
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In the remainder of this article, I’m going to discuss:
AI in healthcare
My thesis on why it can be the biggest AI market theme of all
My favorite names in the group
The background behind each name
My positioning
And more.
This has a chance to be the most consequential application of AI we’ve seen yet.
And if that proves true, it also has a chance to become one of the most lucrative opportunities for us as market participants.