Watson for genomics!
IBM’s advanced AI program Watson has been a food truck chef, a doctor’s assistant, a personal shopper, and of course, a Jeopardy contestant. Its newest job now is perhaps its biggest feat yet, as a cancer researcher at the New York Genome Center aiming to help save brain cancer patients’ lives.
IBM said on Wednesday that its Watson cloud computing system will be put to use in a partnership with the New York Genetic Research Center to help sequence DNA for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most common type of brain cancer in U.S. adults.
Cancer has always been diagnosed and treated based mostly on where it shows up in the body. But in reality, every tumor is different, and with genome sequencing getting cheaper and faster, oncologists are starting to dream about personalized cancer treatments tailored to the DNA mutations causing the disease.
New York Genome Center, a consortium of academic, medical and industry officials, intends to use Watson to sequence the DNA of cancer tumours at much faster rate than would be possible if done by a huma
n being. This information would then be combined with clinical information and fed to Watson to help determine the best way to treat a particular patient.Watson in genomics operates on the same basis as other Watson iterations, processing masses of medical literature to gather potential disease insights and potential treatment options.
In a new proof-of-concept study carried out by researchers from the New York Genome Center, The Rockefeller University, other NYGC member institutions and IBM tested a beta version of its genomic sequencing-specific version of Watson.
It compared Watson to a traditional genome sequencing technique and witnessed that it was able to provide whole genome sequencing (WGS) data – complete with clinically actionable insights – from the tumour cells within 10 minutes. The traditional technique took around 160 hours of manual human analysis to arrive at similar conclusions.
“This study documents the strong potential of Watson for Genomics to help clinicians scale precision oncology more broadly,” said Vanessa Michelini, Watson for Genomics Innovation Leader at IBM Watson Health. “Clinical and research leaders in cancer genomics are making tremendous progress towards bringing precision medicine to cancer patients, but genomic data interpretation is a significant obstacle, and that’s where Watson can help.”
Dr. Robert Darnell, New York Genome’s president, CEO and scientific director, says that to completely analyze one person’s brain tumor, doctors would have to sequence 800 billion base pairs of DNA, adding that it took him a year sequence 140 pairs by himself. In comparison, Watson can sequence 75 million base pairs in one second.
“This is the proverbial needle in the haystack and the haystack is enormous,” Kelly says. “Watson can do in seconds what would take people years. And we can get it down to a really personal level.”
The scientists involved in this project hope to start with 20 brain cancer patients, sequence their DNA and then run the information through Watson to figure out the best ways to treat them, Darnell says.
