Home » Articles » Digital Twins: The Sci-Fi Innovation Behind New Personalized Disease Treatments Digital Twins: The Sci-Fi Innovation Behind New Personalized Disease Treatments By Simon Spichak, MSc Published On: November 18, 2025 Alzheimer’s researchers are building computational replicas of real people, called "digital twins," to help test new drugs and deliver personalized health recommendations. Aboard the starships of the science fiction franchise Star Trek, crew members can step into the HoloDeck, a futuristic room where computers generate lifelike holograms, even recreating digital versions of real people. Alzheimer’s researchers and biotech companies are bringing a version of this concept into the real world through digital twins — computer models customized with a person’s real biomarker data that could predict how they might respond to lifestyle changes or treatments. While these personalized applications might be years away, digital twin technology is already helping drug companies test treatments more efficiently. Digital twins in clinical trials Rachel Mak-McCully is a data scientist at Unlearn, where she trains an artificial intelligence (AI) model using more than 26,000 historical patient records from previous studies. Once the model learns how Alzheimer’s typically progresses, researchers can input individual characteristics about a trial participant, like their age, genetic risk factors, and biomarkers, to create a digital twin. These twins can predict how a person’s cognitive and functional abilities might change over the course of the trial. The approach makes it easier to detect when a treatment works, and could cut down on the number of participants needed for a study. “Rather than recruiting 200, you could recruit fewer subjects,” Mak-McCully explained. The technology is already being used by Alzheimer’s drugmakers. Unlearn recently reanalyzed early-stage trial data for the drugmaker Remynd , finding signs that the drug might work. According to Unlearn, this signal would have been missed without the digital twins. Alzheimer’s Treatments 2025: Here’s Every FDA-Approved Therapy and What Comes Next Moving toward personalized medicine Other researchers are developing more comprehensive models that incorporate published Alzheimer’s research. Earlier this year, scientists at Penn State and the University of Illinois Chicago received a $900,000 National Science Foundation grant to test this approach. The scientists are using large language models, the same technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, that will read swathes of published research to spot patterns and relationships among biomarkers and biological pathways driving Alzheimer’s. Then, these relationships and patterns will be converted into mathematical models and customized with individualized data. By plugging in a person’s blood work, brain scans, genetics and behavioral information, they will create a digital twin. Wenpeng Yin, an assistant professor at Penn State and one of the co-leads on the grant, told Being Patient that they want to “push the boundary of the digital twin” to match closely with the real person. Wenrui Hao, professor at Penn State, and one of the other coleads on the grant explained that if the approach succeeds, it would allow doctors to predict “the personalized, optimal treatment for each patient.” The Penn State scientists believe digital twins could help a patient weigh the potential risks and benefits of taking an anti-amyloid drug like Leqembi or Kisunla . Though Unlearn is only focused on clinical trials at the moment, but some are looking forward to the prospect of personalized medicine. Mak-McCully said, “It would be great to have a digital twin that was not used just in the clinical trial space but was actually used for your own healthcare.” Share This Story, Choose Your Platform! Related Articles Source: https://beingpatient.com/digital-twins-personalized-alzheimers-treatment/