The new cancer data-driven detection programme aims to generate new models that could be used to help predict who is most likely to get cancer.
Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have announced £10 million funding for a cancer data-driven detection programme.
The programme aims to generate new models that could be used to help predict who is most likely to get cancer accurately.
The programme will achieve this by accessing and linking data from different sources, including health records, genomics, family history, demographics and behaviour data. This will enable the researchers to develop advanced statistical models that can help scientists to predict who is most at risk.
“Finding people at the highest risk of developing cancer, including those with vague symptoms, is a major challenge,” said Antonis Antoniou, director of the cancer data driven detection programme and professor of cancer risk prediction at the University of Cambridge.
“The UK’s strengths in population-scale data resources, combined with advanced analytical tools like AI, offer tremendous opportunities to link disparate datasets and uncover clues that could lead to earlier detection, diagnosis, and prevention of more cancers,” he continued.
Building models
Over the next five years, the funding will build the infrastructure required to access and link these datasets, train new data scientists, create the algorithms behind the risk models and evaluate the algorithms and AI tools to ensure that they are giving accurate and clinically useful information about cancer risk.
The models generated from this research could be used to help people at higher risk of cancer in different ways. For example, the NHS could offer more frequent cancer screening sessions or screening at a younger age to those at higher risk, whilst those at lower risk could be spared unnecessary tests.
NHS England has set a target to diagnose 75% of cancers at stages one and two by 2028, and this will only be achieved with research and through embracing new technologies to catch cancer earlier.
“The single most important thing we can do to beat cancer is to find it earlier, when treatment is more likely to be successful. With half a million cancer cases per year expected in the UK by 2040, we need a major shift towards more accurate diagnosis and detection of early cancer,” said David Crosby, head of prevention and early detection research at Cancer Research UK.
