How a Googler used AI to understand his son’s rare disease

I’m still no doctor or biologist, but I’m honored to now serve on the board of End AxD, join scientific conferences and raise funds to enable scientific testing of highly promising research on AxD. Me — a dad who simply wanted to understand what was happening to their child.

Our family’s journey with AxD has been challenging, but it’s also been a journey of hope. I turned to technology and found a bridge to connect with the scientific community, a group of people I will forever be grateful for and in awe of.

And beyond more “everyday” uses, AI has incredible potential to revolutionize medicine, genetics, biology and drug discovery. Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold, created in partnership with Isomorphic Labs, could help scientists develop new drugs and treatments through understanding and predicting how proteins fold. Isomorphic Labs is pushing forward into new therapeutic research by developing cutting-edge computational and AI methods to accelerate the drug discovery process, which could lead to biomedical breakthroughs and treatments for devastating diseases. In addition, Google recently introduced an AI co-scientist to help accelerate scientific discoveries and find cures, including for rare diseases like AxD. These tools will allow scientists to make faster breakthroughs — particularly in the thousands of rare diseases for which there’s limited attention and funding.

I’m grateful for the many scientists working to help families like mine and glad that Gemini empowered me to play a productive role in advancing research. I hope that it can do the same for more people.

To support breakthrough research on treatments of Alexander disease, visit EndAxD.org

Find out more about Leukodystrophies, the group of diseases that Alexander disease belongs to, at ULF.org.

Find out more about the science of Alexander disease at the Waisman Center’s Alexander Disease Lab.

Acknowledgments:
A special thanks to: Dr. Amy Waldman, Neurologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Corina Amor, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Amor Lab team, Pranam Chatterjee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, Albee Messing, V.M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Neuropathology in the Department of Comparative Biosciences and all the doctors, scientists and researchers working tirelessly to find a cure.