Machine-learning algorithms tuned to detecting cancer DNA in the blood could pave the way for personalized cancer care.
copyright by www.the-scientist.com
Modern cancer medicine is hampered by two big challenges—detecting cancers when they are small and offering cancer patients personalized, dynamic cancer care. To find solutions, several academic labs and biotech firms are turning to artificial intelligence, working to develop machine-learning algorithms that could help decipher weak signals in the blood that can identify cancers at an early stage and indicate whether a cancer is responding to treatment in real time.
“You have to find this needle in a haystack . . . this very weak signal amongst all of the cacophony of everything else happening in the body,” says Dave Issadore , a bioengineer at Pennsylvania State University and founder of Chip Diagnostics, which is developing a machine-learning method to diagnose disease by sequencing extracellular vesicles’ cargo.
So far, machine-learning algorithms designed to detect minute quantities of tumor DNA in a blood sample—the goal of so-called liquid biopsies—have performed well in clinical validation studies, but no self-learning algorithm has yet been approved for clinical use. These have the potential to outperform imaging and tissue biopsies in detecting and monitoring cancers by looking for mutations in DNA, RNA, and proteins directly from the blood.
“I think the dream of liquid biopsy is to, A), detect cancer when there is very little of it, and, B) detect cancers during treatment,” says Dan Landau, a clinical oncologist and researcher at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York. However, in the both contexts, liquid biopsy techniques struggle to accurately detect cancer among the infinitesimally small quantities of tumor nucleic acids in the blood. Although the technique’s performance varies between cancer types, liquid biopsies so far have been able to detect cancer in around half of early-stage patients diagnosed through imaging, giving it a sensitivity of just 50 percent.
Image Credit: The Scientist
News This Week
“Nearly Everybody Had Given Up” – Scientists Finally Solve a 60-Year Chemistry Mystery
After more than six decades of failed attempts, chemists have achieved a breakthrough involving a class of molecules long considered too unstable to isolate. Chemists have succeeded in isolating a group of molecules that [...]
Depression Symptoms Improved in Just 48 Hours After a Single Psychedelic Dose
A single dose of psilocybin produced rapid antidepressant effects in a small Swedish clinical trial, with improvements lasting for weeks. A single dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, produced rapid [...]
GHCE Concept
From the preface of the book Global Health Care Equivalency in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Artificial Intelligence, Edited by Frank Boehm: Since the publication of my first book (Nanomedical Device and Systems [...]
Human Bodies Are Producing Two Billion Tons of CO2 a Year
A new study reveals that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by human metabolism has increased dramatically over three decades. The carbon dioxide produced by human bodies as they convert food into energy increased [...]
A Hidden DNA Mechanism Could Explain How 20% of Human Cancers Develop
Researchers have identified an unexpected molecular vulnerability in cancers carrying BAF mutations. Mutations found in roughly 20% of human cancers may promote tumor growth by changing how DNA is organized inside cells. Researchers have [...]
Ebola kills over 5,300 in fastest-growing outbreak on record
Africa’s latest Ebola outbreak has killed nearly 5,400 people, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the continent’s top health agency. Africa Centres for Disease Control and [...]
China makes early progress in using sound waves to stimulate damaged brains
Chinese researchers are testing whether focused ultrasound can help restore consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries, adding to a growing international effort to use sound waves to stimulate deep brain structures without surgery. [...]
Micro-drones fly through the body thanks to ultrasound
At the EPFL, micro-drones have been developed that can be moved without a motor or battery.No motors, no batteries, no electronics on board, just small cavities that convert sound waves into thrust: this is [...]
Leave A Comment