The Department of Energy would create a program to collect organisms from “unique locations” and form an artificial intelligence-led database to advance research on curing cancer and other diseases under new legislation from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
The Homestake AI Act, led by Rounds and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), co-chairs of the Senate AI Caucus, is the first bill to come out of the pair’s national initiative aiming to expedite US scientific research and development. It’s the latest AI legislation spearheaded by Rounds, who’s a strong advocate for increasing AI adoption to support medical and scientific advancements.
Rounds told Bloomberg Government at an exclusive dinner Tuesday that the bill is named for a laboratory underground in South Dakota. He said the goal of the measure is to find new and unique specimens in places with high or low temperatures or water pressure, and those organisms would then be collected into an AI database to determine which parts could cure diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes, as well as those “that we’ve never thought about before,” he said.
“We should be within two years right now of actually curing the vast majority of cancers,” Rounds said, expressing frustration at the lack of action at the federal level to help advance AI in healthcare. “There’s no reason for it except obstinance, and not an understanding of what we’re losing. Time is valuable.”
He added that the US is also likely not “that far away” from finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “If we invested appropriately and focused on it, we would cure the vast majority of cancers in the next five years.”
Rounds blamed slow progress on the appropriations process on Capitol Hill, which often gets stalled and leads to short-term spending deals due to disagreements between Republicans and a lack of bipartisan support on some of the more contentious provisions.
“When we ask ourselves what the opportunities are, they are real, but it requires a focus, and it requires people to see what the possibilities are,” Rounds said.
The bill was inspired by the Gila monster, after scientists found a hormone in the reptile’s venom that helped pave the way for GLP-1 drugs, such as the diabetes medication Ozempic, according to a release shared first with Bloomberg Government. Rounds said in a statement the Gila monster serves as evidence that species who survive in extreme environments “usually hold an interesting secret to doing so.”
Rounds mentioned the bill as an opportunity to be integrated with the Trump administration’s Genesis Mission, a federal initiative that seeks to accelerate AI-driven scientific discovery.
In a statement, Heinrich said the initiative established by the proposed bill would support researchers using AI to identify, catalog, and sequence plants, animals and microbes “that may hold the secret to potential cures and treatments.”
“We need to leave no stone unturned in the race to discover cures and treatments for cancer, diabetes, and dementia,” Heinrich said. “This is how we keep America at the forefront of scientific innovation while saving lives.”