不用化不用化疗疗，一家公司正利用人工智能开，一家公司正利用人工智能开发发治癌新方法治癌新方法人类能否在两三年内治愈癌症？波士顿伯格公司通过一个人工智能平台，开发出了第一款新药BPM 31510，目前进入临床测试阶段。它可以重组癌细胞的新陈代谢，使患者不必经历化疗，让癌细胞自然死亡。一名膀胱癌患者在进行药物测试18周后，肿瘤已经完全消失了。Could we be just two or three years away from curing cancer? Niven Narain, the president of Berg, a small Boston-based biotech firm, says that may very well be the case.With funding from billionaire real-estate tycoon Carl Berg as well as from Mitch Gray, Narain, a medical doctor by training, and his small army of scientists, technicians, and programmers, have spent the last six years perfecting and testing an artificial intelligence platform that he believes could soon crack the cancer code, in addition to discovering valuable information about a variety of other terrible diseases, including Parkinsons.Thanks to partnerships formed with universities, hospitals, and even the U.S. Department of Defense, Berg and its supercomputers have been able to analyze thousands of patient records and tissue samples to find possible new drug targets and biomarkers.All this data crunching has led to the development of Bergs first drug, BPM 31510, which is in clinical trials. The drug acts by essentially reprogramming the metabolism of cancer cells, re-teaching them to undergo apoptosis, or cell death. In doing so, the cancer cells die off naturally, without the need for harmful and expensive chemotherapy.So far, Berg has concentrated most of its resources on prostate cancer, given the large amount of data available on the disease. But thanks to recently announced partnerships, the firm is now building a new modeltargeting pancreatic cancer, which is one of the deadliest forms of cancers with a survivorship rate of only 7%.Ambitious as that may be, it is really just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to mapping out prostate and pancreatic cancer, Berg hopes to analyze data from a whole host of other diseases, including breast cancer. Additionally, Berg thinks his companys artificial intelligence platform can also revolutionize drug testing by creating individualized patient-specific treatment options, which he believes will ultimately reduce the risk of adverse drug interactions in clinical trials and hospitals by a significant degree.I sat down with Berg and Narain to discuss how the company works and what they hope to accomplish in the next few years. The following interview has been edited for publication.Fortune: Carl, why did you decide to move from real estate into healthcare and has it panned out like you thought it would?Carl Berg: I have been in the venture capital business for 40 years but I never once touched biotech because I was concerned about the risk associated with government approval its bad enough when youre doing venture capital but adding one more equation, like getting approval from the FDA Food and Drug Administration makes it a lot harder. But about eight years ago I said, instead of getting into a whole bunch of small companies, I am in a position now where I can do something really big in a hope that it changes the world. So thats what motivated me, and then I met with Niven, and thats what got it started.Did Niven convince you to go into biotech or did you find Niven?CB: I was considering a skin care product investment and I was introduced to Niven at the University of Miami. Niven was the project manager and about a couple months into work on this product, Niven called me and said “Carl, this skin care product appears to have an effect on cancer.” To which I said “Sure, whenever you cure somebody, let me know.”You didnt sound very convinced.CB: Everybody knows that every cancer is different, so how could this one thing work? That didnt make any sense to me. And Niven said, “Can I fly out to California and show you my results?” And he came out, and we talked, and I got convinced that the technology he was using and the approach he was taking, could revolutionize the pharmaceutical market.Niven, what did you say to convince Carl Berg that your work on skin cream could possibly lead to a cure for cancer?Niven Narain: When I met with Carl we were aligned philosophically that there has to be a better way to create a more efficient healthcare system one that really matches the right patients to the right drugs in a very precise manner. So Carl supported taking this concept to the next level. Instead of treating humans with chemicals, that are screened to become drugs, we actually started with human tissue samples and work to understand the biology and develop drugs based on that. Using AI artificial intelligence instead of hypotheses.How exactly does artificial intelligence come into play here?NN: When you start with a hypothesis, you are dismissing a lot of other areas that might actually have an impact on whatever you are trying to figure out. How many times do we see drugs get to late stage trials and fail because the early science either wasnt robust enough or focused on the wrong target?At Berg, we use AI to