2019 AACR Annual Meeting Review
On March 31, 2019, the 110th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) was held in Atlanta, with the theme "Integrative Cancer Science · Global Impact · Individualized Patient Care." As one of the largest and oldest cancer research conferences in the world, AACR attracts professionals from all over the world every year to provide a platform for display and communication of many leading scientific research achievements and leading technologies in the field of cancer.
At this AACR annual meeting, we can also see the AI: Many AI medical technology companies have demonstrated their latest progress in cancer treatment at the conference. For example, Lunit SCOPE uses histological staining images to analyze breast cancer, and BERG's AI platform assists in the development of anticancer drugs.
Lunit's AI platform uses H&E stained histology images to identify breast cancer tissue and determine its size, which will help breast cancer patients understand their risk profile and obtain a more accurate prognostic assessment. According to Lunit's grading of breast cancer patients, the mortality rate of patients in the high-risk group is five times higher than that in the low-risk group. Patients in different risk groups will also have a large difference in response to adjuvant chemotherapy, which will affect their survival rate. The name of this AI platform is Lunit SCOPE, which uses deep learning algorithms and is good at H&E stained image analysis. It is the core technology of Lunit in AI+ cancer tissue research.
BERG, based in Massachusetts, USA, is a biotech pharmaceutical company driven by AI technology. At the AACR Annual Meeting, BERG brought a new mechanism for its malignant glioma drug candidate BPM 31510 in preclinical studies, as well as preliminary validation of new biomarkers for prostate and pancreatic cancer.
Early diagnosis, personalized treatment, and prognosis assessment are all important aspects of cancer prevention and treatment. If progress can be made in these areas, the treatment and living conditions of cancer patients will also have an opportunity to improve.
In addition to AI, the opening report also highlights progress in three areas of precision medicine, immunotherapy and wearables.
Dr. Peter Kuhn, a professor in the fields of biological sciences, biomedical engineering, aerospace and mechanical engineering, and Dr. John D. Carpten, associate professor of clinical hematology at the University of Southern California's Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, mentioned the frequent presence of prognosis in doctors and patients. Disagreements that further affect cancer treatment options and outcomes. They developed a project called ATOM-HP to capture the health and fitness status of cancer patients from wearable devices to quantify their ECOG score performance as a biomarker to determine a patient's prognostic response.
Levi A. Garraway, MD, Ph.D., of the company, talked about two major limitations of precision tumor research: 1) Large-scale cancer genome research shows that many targetable cancer gene mutations show a "long tail" distribution. This means that they are rare in cancer even in certain cancer types. 2) The non-oncogene dependence of many cancers (where the key cancer proteins themselves are not mutated), as well as limited understanding of oncology, advances tumor immunotherapy. Therefore, in the future, there is an urgent need to pay attention to tumor heterogeneity, therapeutic resistance, and rational combination therapy based on the concept of precise oncology.
The AACR conference focuses on all aspects of high-quality cancer research and innovation. It is the focus of global cancer research, bringing together the most cutting-edge research results in the field of cancer. However, the human anti-cancer road has a long way to go.
