How AI is poised to transform cancer treatment

50% of us are now likely to get cancer sometime in our life

The price of our general increase in longevity is an increase in the risk of cancer (and dementia). To the point that 50% of us are now likely to experience some sort of cancer in our lifetime.

In a way that’s not surprising, because it’s estimated that billions of cells a day suffer some damage to DNA, and a mutation that could lead to cancer.

Fortunately, in your earlier years you have a robust DNA repair mechanism and a strong immune system that normally protects you. But both these safety mechanisms decline in effectiveness as we get older.

How AI is poised to transform cancer treatment NutriShield Multi Vitamins and Minerals — Damage to DNA

Cancer is very complicated – there are over 200 different forms. And the mutations that cause it, vary from person to person, from tissue to tissue and from organ to organ.

We now know that there is huge heterogeneity (variation) even within a single tumour. Which is why single drug treatments have had limited success. But there are precision treatments on the near horizon that offer more hope than for a long time.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense potential to revolutionise cancer diagnosis, treatment and patient outcomes.

Ref: Machine Learning and AI in Cancer Prognosis, Prediction, and Treatment Selection: A Critical Approach - PMC (nih.gov)

How AI is poised to transform cancer prediction and treatment

Here are six ways that AI could impact cancer. The sixth one is by far the most important.

1. Early Detection and Diagnosis

AI algorithms can analyse medical images (such as mammograms, MRIs and pathology slides) with remarkable accuracy. They learn from vast datasets, recognising patterns that even experienced doctors might miss.

Faster and more precise diagnoses can lead to earlier intervention, improving survival rates.

2. Personalised Treatment

AI can predict how individual patients will respond to specific treatments based on their genetic makeup, medical history and other factors. This involves what are called check-point inhibitors and adaptive cell therapy.

Adaptive cell therapy is where the patient’s own immune cells (the 'killer' T-cells) are extracted, ‘amplified’ to become more destructive of his or her specific cancer cells, and then returned to destroy the cancer.

These immunotherapy developments will enable tailored treatment plans, minimising side effects and maximising efficacy. But they are currently very expensive.

3. Drug Discovery and Development

AI accelerates drug discovery by analysing large datasets to identify promising compounds. It predicts the effectiveness of potential drugs, streamlining research and development.

4. Radiation Therapy Optimisation

AI assists in planning radiation treatments. It precisely targets cancer cells while minimising damage to healthy tissue, reducing side effects.

5. Patient Prognosis

AI models analyse patient data to predict disease progression and survival rates. This information guides treatment decisions and helps manage patient expectations.

6. Prevention

Early detection is an advantage – but in an ideal world it is still too late. You want to prevent cancer – or any other disease – taking hold in the first place.

In their 2023 book The Age of Scientific Wellness, the authors Dr Leroy Hood and Dr Nathan Price make a critical point:

There is a point of transition, in each individual, where they start to go from being well to the first stages of disease.

If we could know what characterises that transition point, we could potentially either prevent it, or postpone it by years, maybe decades. They call it the Predict and Prevent Strategy.

The future is being able to discover what that transition point is for you personally.

Your personal transition point

In the UK and around the world there are data banks of blood assays from millions of people, for whom we also have their genomic data.

For many hundreds of thousands of these people, there are blood tests taken before and after they transitioned from well to ill – in this case, to having cancer.

If we can analyse these before and after samples, oncologists now believe we could identify patterns of biomarkers that signal the change. Then we could look for these markers in you. And because each cancer involves a unique set of proteins identifiable in the blood, we should be able to detect, at the earliest possible stage, not just if and when cancer was beginning to develop, but where.

But to do this means identifying patterns from billions of bits of data.

Which is what the new AI is good at and needed for

This development should also cut down the number of false positives – diagnoses where a benign tumour is identified as a malignant tumour – and vice versa.

Of course, to be able to develop personalised, preventative medicine will also require that your genome is sequenced and that you have an epigenetic test – showing how your genes are expressed as a result of your lifestyle. Fortunately, the cost of these tests has come down into the hundreds of pounds or dollars.

This advanced AI-driven tracking is why cancer researchers are more optimistic about the future than ever. And you will not have missed that if we can identify the transition point for cancer, we should be able to identify it for other diseases, too.

The transition point for most of us – around age 55

Meantime, until the Predict and Prevent Strategy is generally available, this chart already suggests where the transition point is for most people.

The chart also explains why I believe so strongly that this is the time to implement the lifestyle plan we have developed here: The Delay Ageing Healthy Eating Food and Lifestyle Plan

And why a supplement like NutriShield Premium, incorporating multiple nutrients that support whole body health, is the common-sense approach to risk reduction. NutriShield Healthy Living Anti-Ageing Comprehensive Supplements

Delay Ageing book explains the ageing process and how you can postpone it

Medical researchers agree that if you slow ageing, you also delay the onset of age-related disease. And we know that it’s not just nutrition. Sleep, reducing stress and cardio and strength exercise are also essential to longevity and ageing well.

My book Delay Ageing: Healthy to 100, published in 2020, explains the latest ageing science in an accessible way.

It’s been rated 5-star and I am sure you will get a lot of benefit from it, as so many have already.

Click here to go to the publisher's website where you can buy the printed book or Kindle version.