Using Artificial Intelligence To Prevent Harm Caused By Immunotherapy

RESEARCHERS at Case Western Reserve University, using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze simple tissue scans, say they have discovered biomarkers that could tell doctors which lung cancer patients might actually get worse from immunotherapy.

Until recently, researchers and oncologists had placed these lung cancer patients into two broad categories: those who would benefit from immunotherapy, and those who likely would not.

But a third category—patients called hyper-progressors who would actually be harmed by immunotherapy, including a shortened lifespan after treatment—has begun to emerge, said Pranjal Vaidya, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering and researcher at the university’s Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD).

“This is a significant subset of patients who should potentially avoid immunotherapy entirely,” said Vaidya, first author on a 2020 paper announcing the findings in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer. “Eventually, we would want this to be integrated into clinical settings, so that