How artificial intelligence is advancing cancer research at CNIO

Artificial intelligence is facilitating the testing and development of anticancer drugs in the CNIO’s experimental therapeutics program. Photo: Laura M. Lombardia/CNIO

The research community recognizes the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as a revolution, a “paradigm shift” that affects all areas of research. In oncology, it is already being used to better detect and diagnose cancer, as well as to develop more effective treatments with fewer side effects. But this is just the beginning.

The National Center for Cancer Research (CNIO) is using AI in areas such as genomic and big data analysis; image analysis; protein structure prediction; and discovery of anticancer drugs. And it will soon have a new artificial intelligence division thanks to the allocation of 4.6 million NextGenerationEU European funds to promote digital talent (managed by Red.es from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Services).

For Maria A. BlascoScientific Director of CNIO: “AI is essential for more effective diagnosis and treatment of cancer. CNIO’s scientific priorities have always evolved in parallel with changing scientific paradigms and new technologies. Artificial intelligence is one of these new paradigms.”

Here are some applications of AI in CNIO programs:

• Development of new drugs. The CNIO Experimental Therapeutics Program conducts research into the discovery and development of new anticancer drugs. For your director, Joaquin PastorArtificial intelligence “has the potential to revolutionize the drug development process by making it faster, cheaper and more effective.” At CNIO, artificial intelligence helps in drug screening and development, polypharmacology (drugs that act on different targets at the same time) prediction and drug repurposing, among other applications.

• Define new goals: “AI allows, for example, the creation of artificial proteins that did not previously exist in nature and which we can use in developing new treatments to interfere with the functioning of certain cellular machines.” Oscar LorcaDirector of the Structural Biology Program at CNIO.

• Finding up-to-date information in a sea of ​​data: “The amount and complexity of the biological data we work with (thousands of variables, tens or hundreds of samples), AI helps us analyze it, from identifying low-quality samples to discovering patterns or contextualizing results. “. Leonardo Daniel GarmaResearcher, Breast Cancer Clinical Research Unit, CNIO. The group is leading the Digital Twins project, in which 300 women with advanced cancer are going to create virtual models of their disease that could help future patients.

• Opening up research opportunities by combining different types of data. The technologies most commonly used in cancer research, such as genomics and proteomics or imaging technologies, generate enormous amounts of data. AI is needed to draw meaningful conclusions from them, “but it also helps connect data from a wide variety of technologies, which represents an additional dimension of data analysis that is unprecedented in history.” Fernando PelaezDirector of the CNIO Biotechnology Program.
• Find out how the tumor will develop. In the Human Cancer Genetics program, they use AI to predict the prognosis of tumors based on the expression of gene lists or molecular signatures, as well as patterns analyzed in full sections of tumors, he explains. Mercedes RobledoHead of the Hereditary Endocrine Cancer Group at CNIO. Her group is involved in the IMPact-VUSCan project, which uses AI to classify genetic variants that may be associated with the origin of tumors.

The research community recognizes the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as a revolution, a “paradigm shift” that affects all areas of research. In oncology, it is already being used to better detect and diagnose cancer, as well as to develop more effective treatments with fewer side effects. But this is just the beginning.

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