AstraZeneca's Dave Fredrickson discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic helped to bolster early cancer diagnosis from lung scans.in early cancer diagnosis and drug treatment plans with the hope of significantly reducing mortality rates over the next two decades.
Smoking, Alcohol, and high body mass index are the three major preventable risk factors attributable to global cancers, according to a new study. Just last week, executive directors at AstraZeneca penned a piece focusing on how their Oncology Data Science team is leveraging state-of-the-art ML techniques to construct models for drug development efforts and greater efficiency in clinical trials. In one example, the team discussed how they are trying to integrate millions of data points to produce novel target and disease insight. The team is also creating models to identify various drug response biomarkers in patients.
Fredrickson also noted that AI has helped pathologists read digitized slides and produce results that the human eye alone could not. As a result, patients can have greater confidence in the tailored precision medicines targeting their cancer. Fredrickson said these applications have produced interest worldwide in democratizing the ability to bring forth better precision care and better early screening to places that have previously remained unreachable.