Utilizing Big Data for Lung Cancer Treatment

By CIOReview | Thursday, May 24, 2018

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The capabilities of personalized medicine are fast becoming a reality as medical researchers are beginning to understand more about tumor variability or heterogeneity. The objective of precision medicine is to offer the right treatment to the right individual at the right time. When precision medicine combines with big data, its potential is even bigger. With the increase in worldwide efforts in sharing large-scale data, researchers are able to study the genomic data of multiple cancer types through various databases.

Recently, researchers of the National University of Singapore have developed a tailored risk assessment tool that can predict the survival rate and treatment results of early-stage lung cancer patients. The big data tool successfully identifies early-stage patients who derive a survival benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. This is a very exciting progress as researchers have taken a big step forward in improving treatments which can be personalized for cancer patients improving their survival rates.

Researchers can now harness and convert an unprecedented amount of genomic data into a useful decision-making tool that can be applied in regular clinical practice. The medical experts are looking forward to the capabilities of implementing the novel bioinformatics approach in the evolving area of liquid biopsy, which acts as a substitute to aggressive and painful tissue biopsy.

The researchers are now building an integrated platform based on the principles of cancer genomics, microfluidics, and bioinformatics for testing patient’s samples. The goal of this platform is to translate the scientific findings for true precision medicine in the near future.