The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will use its world-leading capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing to research novel ways to fight cancer and transform vaccine discovery.
The two awards, totaling up to $21.7 million, are from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), part of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. Established in 2022, ARPA-H's mission is to accelerate transformative biomedical research leading to better health outcomes for everyone. The Argonne awards aim to advance this mission by utilizing the lab's capabilities in AI, high performance computing, simulation and structural biology.
"Argonne is at the forefront of AI research, playing an integral role in applying innovative methods to solve complex scientific and engineering challenges. This funding will allow us to apply our efforts to some of our hardest problems, like eliminating cancer and addressing potential global pandemics," said Laboratory Director Paul Kearns. The Integrated AI and Experimental Approaches for Targeting Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Designing Anticancer Ligands (IDEAL) project received $15 million to explore ways to slow or stop the growth of tumors that don't respond to medication.
The project will be conducted in partnership with the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center. Scientists will use AI methods including foundation models -; large-scale models trained.