A little over a year ago, Joseph Coates was told there was only one thing left to decide. Did he want to die at home, or in the hospital?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coates, then 37 and living in Renton, Wash., was barely conscious. For months, he had been battling a rare blood disorder called POEMS syndrome, which had left him with numb hands and feet, an enlarged heart and failing kidneys. Every few days, doctors needed to drain liters of fluid from his abdomen. He became too sick to receive a stem cell transplant \u2014 one of the only treatments that could have put him into remission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI gave up,\u201d he said. \u201cI just thought the end was inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Coates\u2019s girlfriend, Tara Theobald, wasn\u2019t ready to quit. So she sent an email begging for help to a doctor in Philadelphia named David Fajgenbaum, whom the couple met a year earlier at a rare disease summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the next morning, Dr. Fajgenbaum had replied, suggesting an unconventional combination of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and steroids previously untested as a treatment for Coates\u2019s disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within a week, Coates was responding to treatment. In four months, he was healthy enough for a stem cell transplant. Today, he\u2019s in remission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lifesaving drug regimen wasn\u2019t thought up by the doctor, or any person. It had been spit out by an artificial intelligence model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> A 37-year-old man with a rare blood disease was being sent to hospice.
An AI model searched thousands of existing drugs and ranked a combination no one had tried for his condition.
He responded within a week. He is in remission.
The drugs were already on the shelf. The AI\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/sFKRgqtz2g<\/a><\/p>— Cicero Institute (@InstituteCicero) September 23, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>