David Wang, MD, Ph.D
Cancer genetics; cancer chemotherapy; precision oncology.
Precision oncology is the “use of therapeutics that are expected to confer benefit to a subset of patients whose cancer displays specific molecular or cellular features”. Adopting the precision oncology approach enables oncologists to tailor therapies to the unique biology of the patient’s tumor, which improves the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disease. Unfortunately, precision oncology has only been adopted to a limited extent in the clinical setting despite its potential benefits. However, advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics methods, coupled with sophisticated information systems for managing biological Big Data, may offer unprecedented opportunities for the realization of precision oncology.
While bioinformatics systems are an essential tool for the large-scale processing of complex clinical data, much work remains to transform the massive volumes of data into real-life treatment recommendations tailored to each patient. We make excellent workflow for precision oncology. First, our scientists profile patient-derived tumor biopsies (e.g. through microarrays, NGS, immunochemistry, etc.) to assess for mutations and other genetic aberrations. Profiling results are then processed using bioinformatics pipelines to extract relevant information about the tumor, which is then integrated into a shared information system. Our system enables end-users to make queries for real-time data retrieval (e.g. raw and processed data, clinical phenotypes of the patient, etc.) and match treatments to specific targetable molecular alterations. Finally, our AI system is applied to the bioinformatics pipeline to combine the raw findings from molecular tests with existing clinical data to predict the therapeutic benefits the patient can realistically expect.
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