A new challenge for oncologist Watson

IBM Watson will help fight drug-resistant cancer cells

IBM Company, Geektimes

Scientists have been studying cancer for many decades. During all this time, specialists have achieved successes, which can be said to be significant. For example, new medications have been developed that help fight cancer cells. These drugs are something like smart bombs, hitting only the target and leaving everything else intact.

Doctors are enthusiastic about new medicines, although this barrel of honey has its own fly in the ointment. More precisely, not a spoon, but a whole barrel: over time, some types of cancer cells become resistant to such drugs. As a result, the effectiveness of treatment decreases over time, and significantly. The danger of this is that doctors may be left without reliable tools to fight cancer. Researchers from Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have started working together with IBM to find a solution to this problem.

The researchers hope to use IBM Watson Health to solve several complex problems in their project. One of these tasks is to decode the genome of cancer cells of thousands of patients suffering from different types of cancer. Moreover, genome sequencing will be performed twice. The first time is some time after the diagnosis, the second time is after the cancer cells stop responding to medications that previously acted very effectively.

All these data will allow scientists to detect changes in the genome of tumor cells, which lead to the appearance of resistance to the effects of drugs. Most likely, in some people, cancer cells are more resistant to the effects of drugs than in all other patients. Identifying the features of the genome of resistive cells is a vital task, the solution of which will save thousands and thousands of lives. Ideally, each cancer patient should receive individual treatment – and knowledge of the genetic characteristics of a person will help to implement this. IBM Watson is already working in some hospitals, studying the medical histories of thousands of patients, advising doctors to select the optimal combination of medications in each case.

It is the combination of drugs that makes it possible to overcome the resistivity of cancer cells, increasing the patient's chance of remission. Information about the human genome will also help answer the question of why some patients initially do not respond to certain medications with the appointment of an alternative method of treatment.

"It's a game of chess with cancer," says Eric Lender, founder and head of BroadInstitute. "We are taking a step by injecting medicine into the patient's body. Cancer makes a counter move. We need to know what this step can mean in order to make an optimal response. We need to know all the combinations of the enemy." (See the press release of the Broad Institute IBM Watson Health and Broad Institute launch major research initiative to study why cancers become drug resistant - VM.)

The information collected by the authors of the project will be available to the scientific community. Open data will allow other scientists to study current developments and offer their own options for ways to combat drug resistance of cancer cells. In order to obtain the maximum amount of genetic data, the project participants will use a new way to obtain DNA fragments of cancer cells – directly from the patient's blood. This method was called "blood biopsy", and its effectiveness, according to Todd Golub, one of the study participants, is similar to the effectiveness of a conventional biopsy. But the rate of DNA sampling in this case is much higher, plus there is no need to use a rather painful procedure for the patient. Plus, the study participants, patients of various cancer centers and hospitals, can live anywhere – a small drop of blood is enough to obtain the genetic material of such a person.

"Our goal is to ensure that when a patient comes to the doctor, he receives the results of a detailed analysis of cancer cells with information about what caused the disease," Golub said. "In this case, the doctor will know which drugs to use, and understand what effect the introduction of a particular drug into the patient's body will have. And doctors will be able to use another medicine before the appearance of resistance of cancer cells to the drug, for which the diseased cells have not yet developed resistance."

IBW Watson is already working in China under the Watson for Oncology program, helping to select individual treatment for each of the patients. In ordinary hospitals, doctors simply do not have time to find an individual way to treat patients, so generally accepted methods in medical practice are used. IBM Watson, having analyzed the genetic material of patients, can quickly choose a course for any person. For this purpose, a database containing about 15 million pages of medical-related text is used.

Now a number of medical centers and hospitals are participating in the Watson for Oncology project. These are, for example, the Bumrungrad International Hospital (Thailand), the New York Center for Human Genome Research and other organizations.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  25.11.2016