The University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center has partnered with the Energy Department to harness the technology of the department's Argonne National Laboratory toward the development of treatments for drug-resistant cancers.
The UCCCC will receive up to $15 million for the project from the department's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, with initial funding of $6 million, according to a Nov. 14 news release from UChicago Medicine.
The project is called Integrated AI and Experimental Approaches for Targeting Intrinsically Disordered ProtEins in Designing Anticancer Ligands or IDEAL. UChicago's team will be led by UCCCC Director Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD. Dr. Odunsi also serves as dean for oncology in the university's biological sciences division.
Researchers will use AI and machine learning at the Argonne National Laboratory to "mine vast datasets and uncover patterns" to aid in drug development. The first phase of the project will focus on ovarian cancer, with the intention of applying the technology to other cancer types in the future, the release said.