At the Institute of Cancer Research in South Kensington there are many labs. Most are exactly what you’d imagine — scientists in white coats doing clever things with microscopes and petri dishes. But one is full of large, super-powerful computers, which are working round the clock to generate masses of data using AI. This is the Centre for Evolution and Cancer, where Professor Trevor Graham leads teams of computational biologists who are using AI modelling to track how cells change over time and predict how close a person is to getting cancer.
“When I was doing my PhD, it took us weeks to analyse one tiny stretch of DNA — these computers can do that in milliseconds,” he explains. At the moment Graham and his team are looking at cells from patients who have Inflammatory Bowel Disease. “We know that people with IBD have a higher risk of bowel cancer and the NHS will give them regular endoscopies but obviously no one likes having a camera stuck up their bum a lot,” he explains. “So instead we can now use AI to analyse their cells and get more information out of a sample, and start predicting patterns of whether and when a tumour is likely to develop. AI like this is hugely exciting because it’s much more efficient which can mean we get in there earlier and can save more lives. We know that if you catch bowel cancer at an early stage there’s a 97% chance of survival, but it drops to 7% later down the line.”
