Work in a dream
Hundreds of molecules with anti-cancer properties have been found with the help of a crowdsourcing project
Lina Medvedeva, XX2 century
A crowdsourcing project using the power of thousands of smartphones, while they are not in demand by the owners, has helped to reveal the anti-cancer properties of everyday food and medicines.
The project, led by researchers at Imperial College London, uses artificial intelligence to process huge amounts of data in a network of smartphones running in "cloud computing" mode while they are charging at night.
Recent achievements include the study of existing medicines for diabetes and infections, as well as their potential for targeting cancer, and the identification of hundreds of anti—cancer molecules in everyday foods such as oranges, cabbage and grapes. A team from Imperial College, led by Kirill Veselkov from the Department of Surgery and Oncology, together with the Vodafone Foundation, which created the DreamLab application, conducted such a study.
By downloading the app and running it at night while charging the phone, people while they sleep can donate some of the unused computing power of the phone to collect data and accelerate cancer research.
To obtain the results of the project published in the journal Scientific Reports (Veselkov et al., HyperFoods: Machine intelligent mapping of cancer-beating molecules in foods), this platform was used to analyze data on the molecular content of more than 8000 everyday foods, which made it possible to identify more than 110 molecules that prevent cancer. Many of these molecules are flavonoids, they are a class of compounds that give vegetables and fruits color.
According to the latest data, up to 30-40% of all oncological diseases can be prevented only by changing the diet and lifestyle. Plant foods (i.e. foods derived from fruits and vegetables) are particularly rich in cancer-preventing molecules such as polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenoids and plant polysaccharides. Data from experimental studies indicate the presence of numerous mechanisms of action by which food agents contribute to the prevention or treatment of various types of cancer. These include: regulation of the activity of inflammatory mediators and growth factors, suppression of survival, proliferation and invasion of cancer cells, as well as angiogenesis and metastasis.
Studies have also identified anti-cancer properties associated with some existing drugs, indicating the possibility of "repurposing" these drugs to fight cancer. The main ones are the antidiabetic drug metformin (metformin) and the antimicrobial rosoxacin (rosoxacin). According to the group, since the drugs are already used for therapeutic purposes, their approval as cancer drugs involves fewer risks, significantly lower costs and will take less time than the development of completely new drugs.
While these early-stage research results are encouraging, the researchers say further work is now needed to confirm any clinical properties of the molecules identified in food, as well as the effectiveness of drug repurposing. They hope to further study different combinations of food molecules using artificial intelligence simulations to identify their potential effects on cancer.
Dr. Kirill Veselkov, a leading researcher at the Department of Surgery and Oncology, says: "The next step is to use artificial intelligence technologies to study the effects of various combinations of drugs and food molecules on humans. We have created a team of molecular gastronomists, programmers, biochemists/microbiologists, sensation scientists, chefs with a star Michelin, health economists and medical practitioners to advance the next phase of the project."
The DreamLab project, using machine learning inside a mobile supercomputer network, can analyze billions of combinations of existing drug molecules, food and genetic interactions to identify previously unknown properties aimed at fighting cancer.
The human diet contains thousands of bioactive molecules that modulate various metabolic and signaling processes, the actions of drugs and interaction with the intestinal microbiota in the body and in diseases. The study of the effect of one biochemical food component takes from several months to several years of experimental research. Moreover, conventional approaches to determining active compounds in foods that affect health cannot take into account many complicating factors, such as the origin of the product, the way it is grown, stored, processed and prepared, not to mention the cooking parameters and the effect of combinations of ingredients.
A smartphone network can analyze data in a fraction of a second. Using traditional computing methods, it would take decades, but a cloud network can process this amount of data in a few months. For example, with a personal computer running around the clock, it will take 300 years to process the necessary data, while 100,000 smartphones working 6 hours a day will be able to do this work in three months.
Helen Lamprell, Director of External Relations Vodafone, says: "We launched Dreamlab in In the UK just over a year ago, and in a short period of time, this made it possible to conduct vital research. This groundbreaking project demonstrates the power of technology: by simply downloading the DreamLab app, you can make a real contribution to cancer prevention."
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