There was thought to be no hope for Joseph Coates nearly a year ago. However, after his girlfriend begged for help from a Philadelphia doctor, the young Black man who had so much more life to live received help from the unlikeliest of places.
According to the New York Times, Coates had been suffering from POEMS syndrome, a blood disorder that hurts your nerves and other parts of your body. In the case of the 37-year-old Coates, his hands and feet became numb and he had an enlarged heart and kidneys that were failing.
Thinking there was nowhere else to turn, Tara Theobald, Coates’ girlfriend, reached out to Dr. David C. Fajgenbaum, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
But, Dr. Fajgenbaum didn’t use his own brain to discover a way to treat Coates’ rare blood disorder, he used artificial intelligence.
More from the New York Times:
In labs around the world, scientists are using A.I. to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases. Drug repurposing, as it’s called, is not new, but the use of machine learning is speeding up the process — and could expand the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options.
Thanks to versions of the technology developed by Dr. Fajgenbaum’s team at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, drugs are being quickly repurposed for conditions including rare and aggressive cancers, fatal inflammatory disorders and complex neurological conditions.
Dr. Fajgenbaum used AI to come up with a unique solution using steroids, chemotherapy, and other untested treatments to help Coates’ disorder. Although there were initial worries that the treatment might worsen his life, it did the opposite and made him recover faster than anyone would’ve hoped.
It was so successful that four months later he was approved for the stem cell treatment that would improve his condition and currently, the 37-year-old is in remission.