Scientists have developed a new AI model to identify which cancer patients would respond best to a targeted drug on the NHS.
Bevacizumab was approved in December for treating advanced bowel cancer on the NHS.
The drug slows the growth of cancer, but it only works for a small group of patients and carries the risk of serious side effects, including high blood pressure, gastrointestinal problems and blood clots.
Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London and the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin have developed a method to identify the patients most likely to benefit from the drug, with the aim of sparing patients from a drug which would be ineffective for their cancer.
Nearly 10,000 cases of advanced bowel cancer are diagnosed in England each year, with cases in young adults rising.
In research published in the journal Scientific Reports, the team studied 117 European patients who had been treated with bevacizumab and chemotherapy.
The team used an artificial intelligence tool developed at the ICR called PhenMap – short for phenotype mapping – to integrate complex data on the genetic make-up of the tumour, with clinical information including gender, age, and which side the tumour was on.
They used this to search for new biological signals – patterns relevant to a patient’s response to bevacizumab.
Until now, scientists have grouped cancers into a small number of subtypes. PhenMap can pick up more complicated patterns and narrow these groups, putting patients on a scale of one to 100, for example.
Anguraj Sadanandam, professor in stratification and precision medicine at the ICR, said: “Once bowel cancer spreads to other parts of the body, there are very few treatment options available for patients. It is therefore positive that patients can now access the targeted drug bevacizumab on the NHS.
“However, we know that the majority of patients won’t benefit from the drug, meaning thousands of people in England could be facing unpleasant side effects unnecessarily. Until now, we haven’t been able to identify these patients.
“Our research uses advanced AI methods to pull together large amounts of complex data, helping us to spot patterns that would otherwise be impossible for a human to see, and to uncover the clues hidden within a patient’s tumour.”
The professor added that the findings will need to be validated in a larger cohort to ensure they are applicable to all patients.
Professor Kristian Helin, chief executive of the ICR, said: “The approval of new drugs to treat cancers is a significant milestone, but we must recognise that one drug won’t work for everyone – understanding why certain patients won’t benefit from the treatment is crucial to improving outcomes.
“AI has revolutionised cancer research – by enabling us to rapidly analyse large, complex datasets and predict how patients will respond to treatment. This research is a powerful example of how the ICR is leveraging AI to develop smarter, kinder therapies and deliver them to patients sooner.
“This approach also has the potential to be explored in many cancer types, and it will be interesting to see whether the method can predict responses to other targeted therapies across a range of cancer types.”
The work was funded by the EU Horizon 2020, Research Ireland, the Ian Harty Charitable Trust, and the ICR.