ROBOT WAR ON CANCER
Artificial Intelligence predicts tumour growth Scientists hope to stay one step ahead of disease
A COMPUTER tool that uses artificial intelligence could save the lives of thousands of cancer patients.
The machine, designed in Britain, can learn to predict how tumours will grow, evolve and spread, scientists revealed last night.
That will enable doctors to tackle the disease earlier and tailor drug treatment to each individual.
The technology has the potential to forecast whether a tumour will become aggressive, how likely it is to respond to treatment and what drug combinations might work.
The new technique, which has been shown to work in tests on historic tissue samples, could be in use in cancer clinics within a few years.
The work is being carried out by a team led by the Institute of Cancer Research in London.
The institute’s Dr Andrea Sottoriva said: “It’s an exciting
breakthrough and extremely important because ultimately making predictions means we cannot just prevent the disease but in those with advanced cancer we can control it.
“Patients fear cancer but in the future it will be like people living with diabetes or HIV, many of whom live normal lives. We want to make the next generation not so afraid of cancer.”
The AI tool is called Revolver, which stands for repeated evolution of cancer. It studies the genetic make-up of vast numbers of tumour samples to spot patterns which are used to forecast the future.
The ever-changing nature of tumours is one of the biggest challenges in treating cancer. The disease often evolves into a drugresistant form.
The new system, developed by scientists at the ICR and the University of Edinburgh working with the University of Birmingham, Stanford University in California and Queen Mary University, London, is able to identify common patterns and sequences buried deep within a confusing mass of DNA data.
It has been tested on 768 samples from 178 lung, breast, kidney and bowel cancer patients.
Dr Sottoriva said: “With this tool we hope to remove one of cancer’s trump cards – the fact that it evolves unpredictably, without us knowing what is going to happen next.
“By giving us a peek into the future, we could potentially use this AI tool to intervene at an earlier stage, predicting cancer’s next move.
“I would liken our efforts to a game of chess. The best chance we have of beating cancer at its own game is to predict its next move and we are developing our play.
“Instead of simply responding to cancer’s every move, we want to become more akin to a grandmaster – looking several steps ahead, seeing the patterns in play and devising our own strategy to thwart it.”
Unearthing repeating patterns of DNA mutations could be used to predict whether patients will develop resistance to drugs, the research published in the journal Nature Methods shows.
Professor Paul Workman, the institute’s chief executive, said: “Cancer evolution is the biggest challenge we face in creating treatments that will work more effectively for patients.
“If we are able to predict how a tumour will evolve, the treatment could be altered before adaptation and drug resistance ever occur, putting us one step ahead of the cancer.
“This new approach using AI could allow treatment to be personalised in a more detailed way and at an earlier stage than is currently possible, tailoring it to the characteristics of each individual tumour and to predictions of what that tumour will look like in the future.”
Study co-leader Professor Guido Sanguinetti, of Edinburgh University, said: “By solving a statistical machine learning problem we were able to shed light on cancer evolution. It is an example of how the power of AI to detect complex patterns in data can be harnessed to further our scientific understanding to improve human health.”
Professor Karen Vousden, Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist, said: “This study highlights that among the genetic chaos within tumours, there are patterns that we can use to our advantage to understand and even possibly predict cancer’s next move.
“It’s important that we now test whether machine learning could be applied when treating patients and if we can use these mathematical methods to inform which treatments are most likely to be effective. As we
‘I would liken our efforts to a game of chess... we want to be a grandmaster’
enter a new age of technological innovation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are opening up many exciting areas of exploration for improving the detection and treatment of different cancers.”
The search for novel ways to beat cancer comes as forecasts show half of us will develop the disease at some point in our lives.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of sufferers are waiting more than two months to start treatment.
The NHS has failed to meet its 62-day target for the past two-and-a-half years.
It was missed again in June, with statistics showing only 79 per cent of patients in England started treatment within two months of being urgently referred by their GP, against a target of 85 per cent. The delays mean about 66,000 patients have waited longer than the prescribed time limit since 2016. Since January 2014 about 110,000 people have waited more than two months for treatment to start.
The two-week wait for referral from a GP to see a specialist was also exceeded in June with 91 per cent of patients seeing a specialist within two weeks against a target of 95 per cent.
This is the third month in a row
‘By solving a statistical problem we can shed light on cancer evolution’
that this has been missed. The scandal has led to fast- track cancer centres being set up.
They are designed to give people with potential cancer symptoms a definite answer – in some cases on the same day.
In a move designed to stop people suspected of having the killer disease being shunted around different NHS departments, specialists will be able to carry out every type of investigation under one roof.
All tests at the centres will be carried out within a fortnight of referral.
Investigation
Some could receive a diagnosis or the all-clear on the same day as their test.
Others may require further investigation up to a maximum of 28 days.
The pilot scheme is being co-ordinated by NHS England, Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support and is being tested in 10 hospitals around the country.
Lung cancer remains the top cancer killer in the UK, claiming the lives of almost 36,000 people a year, followed by bowel and colon cancer, which kills 16,000.
Prostate cancer kills 12,000 men and has overtaken breast cancer as the third most deadly type of the disease.
OVER the past few decades we have been celebrating huge steps forward in life expectancy but the fact remains that some types of cancer have continued to act as a death sentence. Could it be possible that that may no longer be the case?
Scientists and the medical profession are hugely excited about a breakthrough which will keep doctors one step ahead of the development of the tumour and save many lives.
This is tremendous news. Cancer is a horrible disease and the treatments it entails can cause immense misery and suffering. Those around the patient are affected too.
It is also ironic that as life expectancy increases, so too do the chances of suffering from something particularly nasty at some stage and it is to be hoped these new developments will go towards alleviating that.
The other element to increased life expectancy is the growing emphasis on the quality of that life. It has, perhaps, taken the world of science a little while to realise that if we are to live much longer then we should work towards making life as fulfilling as we can and, for obvious reasons, a cancer diagnosis does the opposite of that.
Congratulations again to the scientists involved in this important work and we look forward to the developments ahead.