Oxford Cancer Biomarkers
Written by Edward ffrench
Can AI tools built on IBM’s POWER systems make a tangible difference to standards of care for cancer patients? Oxford Cancer Biomarkers, alongside our business partner Meridian IT, believe so and they strive to achieve this difference every day.
OCB want to tackle the issue of “belt and braces” cancer treatment. Take colorectal cancer, as an example. Why should patients have to endure the potentially life-threatening toxicity of chemotherapy when the treatment is entirely unnecessary for most? This is the situation for colorectal cancer patients with stage II tumours (approx. 35% of tumours), where the standard course of action is to surgically remove tumours. However, after this point there is a massive dilemma as to whether to proceed with chemotherapy.
Here are the facts:
· Only 1-in-3 will need chemotherapy after surgery.
· 20–30 % cancer patients experience severe side effects from chemotherapy drug 5FU (capecitabine).
· 0.5–2 % are at high risk of life-threatening toxicity from 5FU.
A big problem is accurately identifying who will benefit from chemotherapy, and who can be spared the side effects. Many researchers believe the future of cancer treatment lies in personalised medicine because everyone’s disease behaves differently. This is why OCB set out with the aim of discovering and developing understanding of biomarkers, which are quantifiable parameters that provide insight into a patient’s clinical state. These insights, such as cancer aggressiveness, can tell us if the patient is likely to need chemotherapy and allows OCB to provide targeted treatment using precision medicine based on each individual.
ColoProg is OCB’s unique method for investigating resected tissue samples for risk of recurrence of colorectal cancer. IBM enhanced their ColoProg platform by deploying PowerAI Vision running on POWER systems servers. This was not a case of uprooting and changing the entire platform, PowerAI Vision simply empowers OCB’s biomarker experts to speed up their work using AI.
Here’s how things are going now:
· More than ×10 faster image analysis, enabling Oxford Cancer Biomarkers to test many more patients at the same time.
· Enabling new standards of care, enhancing patient outcomes and boosting efficiency
· Reduced time-to-market and accelerated scaling, enabling Oxford Cancer Biomarkers to take its offering international
Not only has this transformed OCB’s ability to build patient risk profile but it also enhances the research they do, they can trial new ideas faster and learn from them more quickly. Now, stuff gets done FAST and this is important because time is of the essence in cancer treatment.
OCB is a great example of how SystemsAI and IBM’s offering can deliver life saving benefits in the healthcare industry.
