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Adoption of AI in translational research is improving patient care and outcomes

2 days ago

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and AWS to Accelerate AI-Driven Cancer Innovation

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), a leading global cancer center, recently announced a collaboration harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC), and other cloud technology to accelerate breakthroughs in cancer. With cancer deaths projected to reach 15 million annually by 2040, uniting MSK's research and clinical expertise with AWS's advanced cloud technologies is a bold step towards addressing one of the world's most pressing health challenges.

Unlocking data to deliver unprecedented oncology insight

In keeping with MSK’s mission of Ending Cancer for Life, AWS will provide the advanced tools and technology for MSK to unlock insights derived from years of clinical research and cancer treatment. This groundbreaking effort will incorporate deidentified genomic, imaging, and clinical data to create a powerful source for MSK’s AI driven cancer research and personalized treatment development. The goal will be to build a high-quality, up-to-date longitudinal data resource for cancer research at MSK, as well as serve as a source for validating and improving cancer research with partners.

“MSK's collaboration with AWS is rooted in our shared vision and commitment to accelerate the pace with which we ideate, create, and bring lifesaving innovations to cancer patients. A critical enabler of this will be harnessing the scale and expertise of the larger Amazon organization to advance our processes and infrastructure related to AI, inclusive of large language models,” said MSK Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Anaeze Offodile II.

Leveraging large language models (LLMs) through Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker relieves data quality constraints for AI model build; increases data density and speed through secure fine-tuning on cohorts of de-identified patient data; and provides proving grounds for AI model performance to build trust in model output. With this, MSK researchers and providers can better track how a patient’s cancer changes over time using computable disease trajectories. Combined with advanced tumor and clinical response predictions, this data-driven approach can help uncover new insights, personalize treatments, and improve patient care.

"Pairing MSK’s cancer research expertise and vast data resources from over a century of oncology care with AWS's advanced cloud and AI capabilities creates a powerful engine for innovation," said AWS Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector and Healthcare and Life Sciences Dave Levy. "MSK and AWS have a shared vision for applying technology to improve patient care and experience, and we're excited about how this collaboration will accelerate patient-centered discovery and precision medicine for cancer.”

Enhancing MSK Innovation

With support from AWS, MSK also aims to expand its Innovation Hub, its startup ecosystem, and its AI-enabled drug discovery efforts.

MSK Innovation Hub: MSK’s Innovation Hub (“iHub”) launched in 2020 to provide a model for MSK innovators and cutting-edge companies to collaborate on digital solutions for difficult oncology challenges. Working together, MSK and AWS intend to scale iHub for increased impact with a dedicated team focused on AI innovation. The team will support technology pilots to improve and validate applications in cancer through dedicated funding and access to AWS AI and tech startup expertise. The collaboration with AWS will support future cohorts of the MSK Innovation Hub Challenge, a program that enables startups to access MSK resources to solve challenges with AI and cloud technology. Startups will work across a wide range of challenges in the oncology space, from developing novel treatments to improving clinical trials to improving the patient experience in the hospital and at home.
AI Technology Development Fund: Investments will be made available to support MSK researchers and clinicians developing high impact AI technologies with potential benefit to oncology patients, with a pilot program launching in 2025.
A New Entrepreneurship and Startup Incubator: AWS will provide support and resources to enhance MSK’s new program for oncology innovators and entrepreneurs, including access to cloud services and mentoring and networking opportunities through AWS, driving toward product commercialization.
AI-enabled Drug Discovery: This collaboration will also support accelerating the discovery of therapeutics for high-unmet need cancers and orphan indications. By utilizing the AWS Drug Discovery Workbench, MSK researchers can streamline the early stages of drug development, rapidly screening millions of compounds to identify potential candidates. Additionally, AWS's high performance computing resources, such as AWS ParallelCluster, are designed to dramatically accelerate complex simulations and Cryo-EM data processing, tasks that are crucial for understanding protein structures and drug interactions at the molecular level. This integrated approach aims to create a robust pipeline of clinical-stage therapeutics. By significantly reducing the time and cost associated with traditional drug discovery methods, this collaboration has the potential to bring life-saving treatments to patients faster.

About Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

The people of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) are united by a singular mission: ending cancer for life. Our specialized care teams provide personalized, compassionate, expert care to patients of all ages. Informed by basic research done at our Sloan Kettering Institute, scientists across MSK collaborate to conduct innovative translational and clinical research that is driving a revolution in our understanding of cancer as a disease and improving the ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat it. MSK is dedicated to training the next generation of scientists and clinicians, who go on to pursue our mission at MSK and around the globe. One of the world’s most respected comprehensive centers devoted exclusively to cancer, we have been recognized as one of the top two cancer hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report for more than 30 years.