When Paul Conyngham's rescue dog Rosie was diagnosed with mast cell cancer in 2024, surgery and chemotherapy left her tumors intact. Rather than accept the prognosis, the Sydney-based tech entrepreneur — an electrical engineer with no biology training — turned to AI.

Using ChatGPT as a research collaborator, Conyngham mapped a treatment plan and reached the University of New South Wales Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics. After paying for Rosie's genomic sequencing, he used Google DeepMind's AlphaFold to model the mutated proteins driving her cancer and identify viable vaccine targets.

The output: a half-page mRNA sequence formula. Páll Thordarson, director of UNSW's RNA Institute and a nanomedicine pioneer, took that formula and manufactured a bespoke vaccine in under two months. Rachel Allavena at the University of Queensland — who already held ethical approvals for experimental canine immunotherapies — administered it.

Rosie received her first injection in December 2025, with a booster in February 2026. Most of her tumors have since shrunk dramatically.

"This is the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog," Thordarson said. "Ultimately, we're going to use this for helping humans. What Rosie is teaching us is that personalized medicine can be very effective, and done in a time-sensitive manner, with mRNA technology."

The story spread widely after Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI, shared it. The pipeline — consumer AI for research, open protein-structure tools, rapid mRNA manufacturing — mirrors approaches already in human oncology trials at companies like Moderna and BioNTech, suggesting the barrier to personalized cancer medicine may be lower than assumed.

Rosie is back chasing rabbits at the dog park.