California-based startup Radical Numerics claimed on Oct. 20 that it used AI-generated viruses on a human patient. The company said, “In the world's first clinical use of AI-generated phages, Omnii-1 designs were administered to a human patient.” However, the project remains self-published and has not been vetted by scientific journals.
A new startup is making headlines for claiming to insert “AI-generated” viruses into a patient. The company called Radical Numerics has published details of the project on its website, revealing that they have trialed an AI-engineered viral treatment on a human subject.
The concept of targeting bacteria in the body by using viruses is known as “phage therapy”. It is common in the medicine world and works by targeting harmful microscopic organisms. However, viruses which can lock onto a particular infection is a relatively uncharted territory, which Radical Numerics is claiming to have entered.
According to the New York Times, Radical Numerics' has shared the details in a blog post. It remains self-published and has not been vetted by a scientific journal and neither has it been peer reviewed.
When NYT approached the company for clinical information, it refused to share the material citing the proprietary nature of a treatment it hopes to monetise.
What The Company Claims
On its website, the company has posted an article on Oct. 20, titled: ‘Radical Numerics creates first AI-generated phages to reach human patient with Omnii-1”
“In the world's first clinical use of AI-generated phages, Omnii-1 designs were administered to a human patient under compassionate use, marking a milestone toward personalized, AI-designed therapies for antibiotic-resistant infections,” the blog reads.
Sharing its goal, the California-based startup claimed that they want to use artificial intelligence (AI) to understand and engineer biology. That is why they have trained Omnii-1, which is a multimodal genome language model, to help identify and design phages that target specific bacterial strains.
“We aim to use these capabilities to develop suitable phage therapies for patients whose infections have few remaining treatment options…,” the article read further.
The about section of the website lists four founders, who all are reportedly from the AI background. According to the page, co-founder Eric Nguyen was previously associated with Google DeepMind's Co-Scientist team and Google Research.
The other three founders Michael Poli, Stefano Massaroli, Armin W Thomas, were all previously associated with Liquid AI, a company focused on building efficient general-purpose AI.