Israeli AI Maps Immune System to Transform Cancer Care

While many worry about artificial intelligence causing harm, Israeli mathematician Noam Solomon is using it to save lives by mapping one of the body's most complex systems.

Solomon leads Immunai, a biotech company that's teaching AI to understand how our immune systems work. His team collects blood samples and tissue from patients, then uses artificial intelligence to analyze millions of immune cells from just a single drop of blood.

The goal sounds ambitious because it is. Solomon wants to build a database of one million patient samples to understand how immune systems change and respond to treatment. Right now, they're at 40,000 samples and growing fast.

Major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Bristol Myers Squibb are already paying millions to access this research. They're using it to design better clinical trials and predict which patients will respond best to specific drugs.

The technology works by analyzing hundreds of millions of measurements from each blood draw. Advanced AI systems spot patterns that human researchers might miss, revealing who will respond to treatment, who won't, and crucially, who might experience dangerous side effects.

Last October, Immunai announced an $85 million partnership with AstraZeneca to develop treatments for inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. They're also working with top US medical institutions including Mount Sinai, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Solomon admits the project could take 10 to 15 years to complete. When an early investor warned him that the immune system is "infinitely complex," Solomon reframed it as "incredibly complex" instead. The difference matters because one sounds impossible while the other is just really, really hard.

The Ripple Effect

The research spans multiple diseases that affect millions worldwide. Immunai's database includes samples from patients with cancer, Crohn's, colitis, arthritis, lupus, and other autoimmune conditions. Each new sample teaches the AI more about how our bodies fight disease and respond to treatment.

This knowledge could transform medicine by moving us away from one-size-fits-all treatments. Instead of prescribing the same drug to every patient and hoping it works, doctors could use AI predictions to match each person with therapies tailored to their unique immune system.

The partnerships keep growing, with more announcements expected in coming months. Since founding the company in 2018, Solomon has raised $270 million and built teams across New York, Tel Aviv, and Europe.

Solomon puts his work in perspective by comparing it to ChatGPT. "If ChatGPT and Claude are unlocking conversational intelligence, we are unlocking immune intelligence," he explains. While conversational AI has become part of daily life, immune intelligence could determine who lives and who dies from diseases we're still learning to treat.

For patients facing harsh treatments like chemotherapy or immunotherapy, this research offers something precious: hope that the right treatment will find them faster.