Team Blitz India
INNOVATE UK has given a £1-m grant to fund the AI-VISION initiative, aimed at revolutionising treatment decisions for breast cancer patients. The pioneering project brings together the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), Durham University, the Royal Marsden Hospital, and the techbio company Concr.
Dr Navita Somaiah, a clinician-scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and a clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden, expressed excitement about the project’s potential. She said, “It’s exciting to announce our new partnership, which is bringing together experts in cancer, genomics, astrophysics, and artificial intelligence for an innovative project that is seeking to improve treatment for triple-negative breast cancer.”
AI-VISION will play a pivotal role in clinical decision-making, particularly in guiding breast cancer patients towards optimal treatment pathways, including the utilisation of immunotherapy. At the heart of AI-VISION lies a 24-month observational clinical study, focusing on early triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. This initiative aims to scrutinise tissue samples to define and establish chemotherapy response biomarkers, irrespective of immunotherapy status.
“The aim of our project is to uncover new potential ways to treat triple-negative breast cancer more effectively, by combining data from a variety of different sources and analysing it using AI. For example, we hope to uncover genomic characteristics that indicate sensitivity to immunotherapy, and could guide us to selecting the patients most likely to benefit from these newer therapies”, said Somaiah.
Leveraging cutting-edge Bayesian computational frameworks, inspired by disciplines such as astrophysics, Concr will interconnect diverse oncology data to detect and develop biomarkers indicative of drug response. The ICR will contribute invaluable genomic data from its esteemed genomics facility, which will be seamlessly integrated with clinical findings from TNBC samples through Concr’s innovative FarrSight platform.
Presently, the treatment protocol for TNBC relies heavily on physician discretion, primarily driven by clinical and pathology findings. However, despite notable advancements in molecular genomic profiling, there exists no licensed platform that effectively links tumour molecular data with drug response predictions for TNBC. The AI-VISION study aims to bridge this critical gap, heralding a new era of precision therapy in breast cancer treatment.
