Nonprofit uses AI to find drugs to fight cancer, find new treatments

ATLANTA — About 1,700 people die every day from cancer in the United States.

Now, one scientist is using artificial intelligence to find new uses for existing drugs in an effort to fight cancer.

Channel 2′s Linda Stouffer learned how Laura Kleiman lost her mother to cancer and was inspired to found a nonprofit after.

Now, she’s using AI to not only help save lives but also time and money.

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Kleiman was working as a scientific researcher at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass. when her mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

“As we were looking for treatment options for her, we learned about opportunities for other treatments that could potentially help her,” Kleiman said. “But we didn’t yet have enough data to know whether they would be safe and effective for treating her type of cancer.”

After her mother lost her fight with cancer, Kleiman left Dana Farber and founded the nonprofit Reboot Rx, a tech nonprofit startup that uses AI to search for effective and affordable treatment options for cancer patients.

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Through her research, Kleiman discovered the opportunity to repurpose generic drugs, which cost about 85% less than branded drugs, that were already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and already on the market.

“There was nobody pushing these types of drugs forward because they fall outside of the typical drug development system,” Kleiman said. “It’s not in the business model of pharmaceutical companies to develop low-cost drugs, and therefore they just stay sitting on the shelf. And patients like my mom weren’t able to benefit from them.”

Treatment costs can be just as devastating as the disease. Kleiman said about 40% of cancer patients exhaust their life savings within two years of a cancer diagnosis.

“That’s why we’re so excited about the use of generic drugs that are so much cheaper, hundreds or a few thousand per year,” Kleiman said. “Our prostate cancer drug, for example, being as little as $50 a year treatment compared to $100,000 a year. Yes, it’s a game changer.”

The use of AI is not only saving money, but also time. Kleiman and her team use the technology to quickly scrub through decades of data on thousands of studies in a matter of weeks, that would normally take years to read, to find the drugs that hold the most promise as treatments.

“Unless you look at patients face to face every day, you forget how important it is to drive lab-based research to patients as quickly as possible,” Dr. David Frank, an oncologist, said. “This approach definitely has that potential.”

Frank has been an oncologist for 30 years and also worked at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute while Kleiman was starting her research.

He said new developments like this always come with some skepticism, and that’s why clear communication is key to recognizing Reboot Rx’s research.

“I’m contacted by community oncologists all over the country, all over the world, constantly,” Frank said. “I think if you can convey information that is driven by good data that this treatment may be effective for your patient, people will absolutely try it.”

However, another challenge is funding. Right now Boston-based philanthropy firm The DRK Foundation is backing Reboot Rx’s work.

“Where there may not be a large profit to be made, the fact that it can have a big beneficial impact on patients, it’s the driving motivator,” Frank said.

Kleiman said later this year, Reboot Rx is bringing their first repurposed drug into the standard of care for a prostate cancer patient. She said the generic drug could slow progression and either delay or avoid surgery and radiation altogether.

“My team and I do this work to provide hope to cancer patients and their loved ones there are other solutions, that there are other opportunities that can help them live longer and better lives,” Kleiman said.

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