An international collaboration involving British Columbia scientists has secured 2 million to apply artificial intelligence to improve prediction and treatment for high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common and deadly form of the disease. BC researchers are part of a global team that was awarded 2 million to study how artificial intelligence can improve prediction of ovarian cancer survival, guide treatment selection and inform clinical trial recommendations, in an effort to ultimately raise long-term survival rates. Although new treatments have been introduced over the last decade, 70 per cent of patients will relapse and five-year survival rates remain low, underscoring the need for new approaches.
The package includes a 1 million Artificial Intelligence Accelerator Grant from the Global Ovarian Cancer Research Consortium and another 1 million in compute power from Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence for Good Lab. The consortium was founded by Ovarian Cancer Canada, the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance in the United States, Ovarian Cancer Action in the United Kingdom and the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation in Australia, and it convenes investigators and patient advocates from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Multidisciplinary Ovarian Cancer Outcomes Group, or MOCOG. Founded in 2012, MOCOG is focused on identifying factors associated with long-term survival in high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
The research team will analyze one of the largest and most comprehensive international collections of ovarian cancer data ever assembled, integrating tumor images and molecular data, clinical records, immune features, genetic information and lifestyle factors from patients across international research groups. Conventional statistical models have had limited success identifying distinct markers of longer survival, so the goal is to use artificial intelligence to uncover complex patterns and build robust tools to predict treatment response that can directly guide treatment choices. Dr. Ali Bashashati, director of artificial intelligence research for the Gynecological Cancer Initiative’s Ovarian Cancer Research Program and an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, will lead the artificial intelligence work alongside investigators from UBC, BC Cancer and the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, with additional leadership from experts in epidemiology, molecular oncology and clinical medicine in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Microsoft is partnering on the grant through its Artificial Intelligence for Good Lab, donating nearly 1 million in in-kind Azure compute credits to accelerate the large-scale data analysis central to the project. Leaders of the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance described the grant as a validation of the Global Ovarian Cancer Research Consortium’s mission to unite leading groups to tackle challenges that have stalled progress in ovarian cancer, emphasizing that artificial intelligence could accelerate breakthroughs across the ovarian cancer continuum from prediction to treatment selection. Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence for Good Lab leadership highlighted the urgency of finding lifesaving treatments and said that equipping global researchers with powerful artificial intelligence tools and computing resources is intended to speed progress toward discoveries that could save lives.
