Global AI collaboration revolutionises personalised cancer treatment
Published on Jun 11, 2025
By IANS
- NEW DELHI — An international team of scientists has unveiled an artificial
intelligence (AI) technique that securely analyses global cancer samples,
paving the way for more personalised and privacy-protected cancer treatments.
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- This innovative approach promises to accelerate
personalised cancer treatment by enabling clinicians to match therapies to
individual patients better, Xinhua news agency reported.
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- The study involved the analysis of protein profiles,
known as proteomes, from 7,525 cancer samples collected by 30 collaborating
research groups across six countries, including Australia, the United States,
Canada, Spain, Greece, and Austria.
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- Strict privacy laws and technical differences in lab
methods have long made it difficult to combine large cancer datasets, said the
researchers led by Australia's Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI).
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- To overcome these obstacles, the CMRI team in Sydney used
federated deep learning, training AI models locally so that only insights --
not sensitive data -- were shared with a central server, which allowed them to
build an accurate global diagnostic tool without transferring patient
information between institutions, according to the study published in Cancer
Discovery.
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- "It was a very exciting moment when we first saw
that the results from data with highly restricted access were just as accurate
as the results obtained when the data was all stored in one place," said
CMRI Director and Head of the Cancer Research Unit Roger Reddel.
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- The method successfully integrated proteomic data
obtained through different techniques, further enhancing diagnostic precision,
said Reddel, also the study's senior author.
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- The research, part of CMRI's ProCan programme, aims to
use proteomic data to guide cancer treatment, he said, adding this AI-driven
approach marks a major step forward in precision oncology by enabling
large-scale data analysis.
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- "The purpose of CMRI's ProCan research programme is
to develop proteomic tests that will assist cancer clinicians to choose the
best treatment available for each of their patients. By overcoming several
major barriers to assembling and analysing large cancer proteomic datasets, we
have made a major step towards achieving this goal," Reddel said.
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