According to World Pharma News, an AI technique called machine learning was able to identify a lifesaving treatment for a patient diagnosed with idiopathic multicentric Castleman’s disease (iMCD) by scanning the components of over 4,000 medications. Experiments then performed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to support the AI finding, confirmed that adalimumab, a treatment for multiple other conditions, would also most likely work for iMCD.
The study determined that a protein that adalimumab inhibits, called tumor necrosis factor, or TNF, was also elevated in iMCD patients with the most severe cases. In consideration of these findings, the author of the study David Fajgenbaum, MD from Translational Medicine and Human Genetics and co-founder of Every Cure, and the iMCD patient’s personal physician Luke Chem, MD from Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, BC, tried the TNF inhibitor on the patient whose disease was so advanced at the time he was considering hospice care.
According to Fajgenbaum, the patient went from making plans for the end of his life to complete remission for close to two years. He credits this outcome to be a success for iMCD and for the use of AI tools for evolving treatment options overall.
The AI tool used by the research teams in this study was developed based on the initial work of Chunyu Ma, a research assistant at the Huck Institute of the Life Sciences at Penn State University, and David Koslicki, an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Biology also at Penn State.
Fajgenbaum, who also has iMCD himself, is encouraged by this revelation of repurposing medications intended for other diseases and hopes that this AI assisted discovery will help hundreds or thousands of other iMCD patients in late stages get treatment and possibly a cure.
Fajgenbaum and the others on his team are preparing to conduct clinical trials for another treatment option for iMCD later this year. The drug being tested includes a JAK1/2 inhibitor, which is also used for treatment of other diseases.
About idiopathic multicentric Castleman’s Disease
Castleman disease is a rare disorder that comes in two forms. Both forms cause abnormal cell growth, creating non-cancerous tumors and lymph node enlargement that affect the disease-fighting lymphatic system.
The more lethal form of Castleman disease (multicentric) occurs when the growths are widespread. Because people with Castleman disease are often asymptomatic or exhibit common symptoms like fatigue, weight loss, and fever, Castleman is easily misdiagnosed as other associated lymphatic disorders.
Sources: World Pharma News
