Of course the ChatGPT dog cancer vaccine spawned a startup

That entrepreneur is Paul Conyngham, who says he is launching Gamgee to offer “personalised mRNA cancer vaccines for dogs.” But his ambitions go well beyond dogs — and pets — with Gamgee’s website promising the company will harness AI and genetics to develop personalized treatments for a range of diseases and species, including humans.

At the center of Gamgee’s origin story is Rosie, Conyngham’s Staffordshire bull terrier-Shar Pei mix, who features prominently on Conyngham’s social media and the startup’s website, as well as its AI-generated anime launch video. When announcing Gamgee on X, Conyngham said “I used chatgpt + computational genomics to design a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for her tumour. Several of her tumours shrank.”

Conyngham, who stresses on Gamgee’s website that he is “not a biologist,” credits that intervention with adding years to Rosie’s life. Gamgee’s stated mission is to do that at scale. In case the canine element is lost on its visitors, the website features a slideshow of adorable dogs alongside ages and purported cancer diagnosis to remind them “who we’re building this for.”

But as I reported for The Verge earlier this year, the science behind Rosie’s story is considerably messier than Conyngham’s neat account suggests. The exact role AI played in the endeavor wasn’t clear, and researchers said the broad claims gave the technology too much credit while minimizing the role of the humans involved. Moreover, the protocol Rosie followed made it impossible to say whether the mRNA vaccine was responsible for her improvement, since it was administered alongside another therapy.

That hasn’t stopped the idea from attracting support. The startup is backed by storied tech incubator Y Combinator and says it is recruiting for its first clinical trials in Australia, with a waitlist open everywhere else (though Conyngham says they’re “accepting cases globally.”). On a section on its website aimed at veterinarians, Gamgee touts a roughly 75 per cent tumor reduction in its “first documented case,” while promising to require less than 20 minutes of a veterinarian’s time, no new clinical workflows, and a finished “vaccine in hand” in around four weeks. The company cautions that this timeline is based on a single case and may vary. Costs aren’t disclosed on the site.

Gamgee says it’s working in collaboration with the University of Queensland and institutes at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and Conyngham encourages potential funders or study partners to reach out.

Ultimately, the company says its mission extends beyond dogs and other animals to personalized treatments for humans. For a startup built around a single dog whose improvement cannot be clearly attributed to the treatment at the core of its pitch, that’s a grand ambition.