A Google AI model has discovered a promising new cancer treatment method, described as 'a milestone for AI in science'

A lab technician works on a research process to find new CAR-T cells and RNA in the laboratory of French biopharmaceutical company Cellectis in Paris on September 23, 2021. - The human immune system has T lymphocytes to protect itself, which identify and destroy foreign cells. Cellectis develops CAR-T cells, or "chimeric antigen receptor T cells", a genetically engineered T cell for use in immunotherapy. The principle of the new and innovative class of therapy is to retrain the immune system to target a specific disease, such as cancer cells. Cellectis manufactures the RNA molecules in the Paris laboratory, which are then sent to a production site in the USA. After many more operations the RNA is turned into molecular scissors capable of cutting a fragment of DNA in T cells. (Photo by THOMAS COEX / AFP) (Photo by THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images).

Google has announced a new AI model as part of a research collaboration with Yale University. If that sounds a little dry and unexciting, well, you've probably got AI fatigue like the rest of us. However, this one may well be worth paying attention to, as it's already revealed a promising new cancer treatment method—which Google describes as "a milestone for AI in science."

As Google's blog post details, a major challenge in cancer immunotherapy is the existence of "cold" tumors, or tumors that are essentially invisible to the body's immune system. The C2S-Scale 27B model was tasked with finding a drug that could act as a conditional amplifier, or something capable of boosting the immune signal in an environment where low levels of interferon, an immune-signalling protein, were already present—but crucially, not in significant enough quantities to trigger the immune system into doing its job.