<\/p>\n Essentially, it was looking for a drug that could turn a “cold” tumour “hot”, or susceptible to immunotherapy, when interferon was already in the mix.<\/p>\n Related articles<\/p>\n The model simulated the effect of over 4,000 drugs through what the researchers refer to as a “dual-context virtual screen.” This had two stages: the first being real-world patient tumor samples with low-level interferon signalling, and the second being existing cell data with no immune context.<\/p>\n With the screen in place, the AI model was tasked with identifying compounds that would fulfil this specific brief. The AI came back with many potential candidates, but a small fraction of them (10 to 30%, by Google’s estimates) were already known in prior literature. The remaining drugs are described as “surprising hits” with no prior known link to the study’s parameters.<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Akos Stiller – Getty Images)<\/p>\n Not only that, but the model also revealed a specific result. It predicted a strong increase in antigens<\/a> (immune-signalling particles) when a kinase CK2 inhibitor, called silmitasertib<\/a>, was applied in an “immune context positive” setting, ie in the real-world patient samples where low-level interferon was present, but not in the “immune-context-neutral” setting, ie the isolated cell data.<\/p>\n This caused much excitement among the researchers, as silmitasertib had not been previously reported to enhance antigen presentation to such a degree. In essence, the AI had generated a new, testable hypothesis, instead of merely repeating known facts.<\/p>\n To the lab, then. The researchers discovered that treating cells with silmitasertib alone had no effect on antigen presentation, but treating the cells with it in combination with low-dose interferon resulted in a roughly 50% increase, which would make a “cold” tumor much more visible to the immune system. The AI model had successfully identified a novel, interferon-conditional amplifier that could potentially make previously unresponsive tumors much more treatable with immunotherapy.<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Issarawat Tattong via Getty Images)<\/p>\n And hopefully, this is just the beginning. According to the researchers:<\/p>\n “This result also provides a blueprint for a new kind of biological discovery. It demonstrates that by following the scaling laws and building larger models like C2S-Scale 27B, we can create predictive models of cellular behavior that are powerful enough to run high-throughput virtual screens, discover context-conditioned biology, and generate biologically-grounded hypotheses.”<\/p>\n So, while it’s tempting to throw AI under the bus entirely for its many, many flaws, its potential to discover new scientific breakthroughs may be genuinely world-changing. It’s important to remember that, while AI is being adopted at an unprecedented, and almost-certainly ill-advised<\/a> rate, there is a real possibility it may be able to take on some of the hardest challenges facing our species. As long as it’s controlled by the right hands, of course. Just saying.<\/p>\n Best PC gaming kit 2025<\/p>\n All our favorite gear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google has announced a new AI model as part of a research collaboration with Yale University. If that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":["post-507422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115390864078574145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Data](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/qhwiqPJTwpeNLX9hs6DE3F.jpg\")
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