How an AI-Generated Twin Might Help Treat Breast Cancer
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the medical field, including the treatment of various types of cancer. Breast cancer is one of the most prolific forms of cancer and can be deadly for those who don’t undergo effective treatment soon enough. Fortunately, AI is helping oncologists to diagnose various cancers and determine the best way to treat individual cases by creating AI-driven virtual molecular twins of individual patients.
Conventional breast cancer treatment typically involves a combination of chemotherapy and other drugs. If that doesn’t work, removing one or both affected breasts often is done via a mastectomy. Such invasive procedures clearly carry significant risks and permanently alter the patient when breast removal is done, but an AI molecular twin might change that.
Researchers Say Molecular Twins Can Improve Cancer Care
Medical researchers at Cedars-Sinai Hospital are using AI to create molecular twins of patients to help deliver more effective medical care to treat breast cancer and other types of cancers. The researchers use a sample of a patient’s cells to create duplicate cells at the molecular level and better learn what’s afflicting the patient. The researchers then create specialized treatments that can be more effective when first using them on the patient’s AI twin.
The new treatment affirms that each breast cancer patient has her own unique physiology and impacts on her cellular structure. The uniqueness of each patient makes it nearly impossible to use a standardized method for breast cancer treatment because one size does not fit all in the medical world. The AI twin can help confirm which treatments will produce satisfactory results for real-world breast cancer treatment and other types of cancers.
Breast Cancer Affects Many Women
Breast cancer is second only to skin cancer when it comes to how many women suffer from it. It’s the second most common cancer women get, and it can be deadly. Breast cancer kills black women at higher rates than it does white, Hispanic, Asian, or indigenous women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Discovering new ways to more effectively treat breast cancer and other types of cancers will help reduce the number of deaths. It also might help reduce the number of mastectomies that women undergo. The CDC reported 272,454 newly diagnosed cases of breast cancer among women in 2021, which is about 134 new cases for every 100,000 women. The next most prevalent type of cancer among women in 2021 was lung and bronchus cancer, which affected about 45.5 out of every 100,000 women with newly diagnosed cases.
Breast cancer mostly affects middle-aged and older women the most, with 62 being the median age of women diagnosed with breast cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates nearly 311,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed among women in the United States in 2024. Those cases will cause an estimated 42,250 deaths, which is nearly 14 percent of all cases. The new AI molecular-twin programs might help lower that death rate.
