AI detects new breast cancer sub-types and treatments

Conducted by London’s Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), the work applied machine learning to gene sequences and molecular data from breast tumours, identifying vital differences across ‘luminal A’ breast cancer that have until now been treated as a single category. Patients with luminal A tumours often have the best survival rates, but there is a wide response to the standard treatments given, with patients reacting differently to drugs and immunotherapy.

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“Doctors have used the current classification of breast cancers as a guide for treatment for years, but it is quite crude and patients who seemingly have the same type of the disease often respond very differently to drugs,” said Dr Maggie Cheang, leader of the Genomic Analysis Clinical Trials Team at the ICR.  

“Our study has used AI algorithms to spot patterns within breast cancers that human analysis had up to now missed – and found additional types of the disease that respond in very particular ways to treatment.