Uniting Science & Technology against Cancer
The theme for World Cancer Day 2025, which falls on 4th February, is ‘united by unique’. And indeed, unique and novel developments are taking place within the life sciences sector that are uniting basic science with technology, to reshape the future of cancer treatment and diagnosis.
For instance, a few days ago, LinkedIn founder and tech investor Reid Hoffman launched a drug discovery startup called Manas AI, alongside Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, an eminent oncologist. After raising $24.6 million in a seed round, the US-based startup will use Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure, as well as Microsoft's deep domain knowledge in artificial intelligence (AI) to develop treatments for aggressive cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma.
Another major development comes with four National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins – joining forces and securing funding from AI technology leaders AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft and NVIDIA, to create the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA). The alliance will apply responsible AI to the collective power of the participating cancer centers’ data to unlock insights while protecting data security, all to identify more ways to transform cancer research and care.
Likewise, Canadian biotech company Onco-Innovations has recently acquired a software company to use its advanced AI-driven analytics and real-world multimodal data towards cancer research and drug development.
A phenomenal push for AI has recently been announced by US President Donald Trump in the form of an ambitious $500 billion investment plan to boost the country's AI infrastructure. Under this project, three technology giants, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, have joined forces to create a new company named Stargate, which is being described as the ‘largest AI infrastructure project in history.’
According to Oracle’s Chairman Larry Ellison, this new AI-based project has the potential to transform the healthcare landscape, particularly by creating personalised cancer vaccines for individuals within 48 hours. Ellison is of the opinion that AI could soon enable the development of customised mRNA vaccines, tailored to combat cancer for specific patients, which could then be produced using robotic systems.
Uniting technology with science in another unique way, healthcare experts in the UK are using AI to screen for breast cancer in a massive “landmark” trial. Almost 700,000 British women are expected to take part in a study of using algorithms to spot tumours earlier and faster.
Focusing on early cancer detection using AI, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed Mirai, an advanced AI model that can detect breast cancer up to five years before a clinical diagnosis. What makes Mirai stand out is its performance across a wide range of populations. The researchers tested Mirai on screening data from seven hospitals in five countries: the United States, Israel, Sweden, Taiwan, and Brazil.
Quoting another interesting and recent partnership between technology developers and life sciences researchers, the International Institute of Information Technology and Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in India have developed datasets comprising digitised histopathological images of brain cancer, with the help of AI. With its focus on Indian demographics, the dataset is one of the largest in Asia. While a beginning has been made by curating a dataset on brain tumours, efforts are underway to expand the dataset to include other cancers such as breast, lung, colorectal, oral, and cervical cancers.
Undoubtedly, cancer is one of the world’s biggest killers. But by uniting deep scientific understanding of individual cancer biology with advanced technology, new solutions and new hope can be generated. The efficacy of this collaborative approach is signalled by the AI-assisted anticancer drugs in clinical trials, estimated to number 52 as of May 2024.[1] As it is rightly said, ‘We can achieve far more together than we could alone.”
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