'AI scientist' discovers that common non-cancer drugs, when combined, can kill cancer cells
By Sanjana Gajbhiye
Earth.com staff writer
[NOTE: The entire article is worth reading. Below are just the highlights]
earth.com
Three combinations stood out for having better results than standard cancer therapies. One involved simvastatin and disulfiram.
Another paired dipyridamole with mebendazole. A third involved itraconazole and atenolol. These drug pairs were not only effective against MCF7 cells, but they worked without overly harming healthy cells.
“Supervised LLMs offer a scalable, imaginative layer of scientific exploration, and can help us as human scientists explore new paths that we hadn’t thought of before,” said Professor Ross King from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who led the research.
One of the most effective combinations was disulfiram with simvastatin, which achieved the highest synergy score of the entire study at over 10 on the HSA scale.
The feedback loop, AI suggesting ideas, humans testing them, then feeding results back to the AI, represents a novel way of conducting science. |
