Data Science for Science

  Hello! Today we have an entry in the field of medicine. What is skin cancer recurrence? An early-stage skin cancer type called  melanoma  is treatable if diagnosed early enough. Most melanoma deaths in the US occur because of recurrence of the disease which was early stage at the time of diagnosis. However, recurrence is not detected until the cancer starts to spread; called symptomatic metastatic progression. This is where prognostic tools can be helpful for regular surveillance and quick action to stave off mortality and ensure health. Also, identifying high-risk patients can help in determining who should receive special therapies and treatments. Enter Machine Learning. A team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital performed two types Machine Learning prediction with nine different models: Melanoma Recurrence Classification: Where the prediction would be a probability that melanoma recurrence would occur. Time-To-Event Melanoma Recurrence Risk Predict...

      (Credit: Retinal scan courtesy UK Biobank) Artificial Intelligence can now identify patients with a high risk of heart attack just by an eye scan that can be taken at an optician or eye clinic. Sounds too good to be true? The size and pumping efficiency of the left ventricle (one of the four chambers) of the heart is linked to risk of heart attack. An oversized left-ventricle leads to higher risk of heart disease. In turn, the retinal scans are linked to the size and pumping efficiency of the left ventricle. Currently, risk of heart disease can be determined through expensive diagnostic tests using MRI and ECG which are available only in a hospital setting. These tests are also unavailable in less well-resourced healthcare systems in developing countries and unnecessarily increase healthcare costs in developed countries.  Retinal scans on the other hand are comparatively cheap and available in many optician practices. Patients who are found to be at high risk...

  Drug development for the treatment of various diseases is the cornerstone of medicine for human health. Drug development is an expensive and time-consuming process. Most drugs developed up to the human-trials stage end up having no effect at all or too many side-effects. These drugs are thus discarded resulting in wasted time, money and effort. The cost of these drugs end up on the price tags of drugs that do become successful. Before drug development can even take place the drug discovery process must occur. Briefly, drug discovery involves a process of finding promising drug-like molecules that can bind or "dock" properly onto certain protein targets. After successfully docking to the protein, the binding drug, also known as the ligand, can stop a protein from functioning. If this happens to an essential protein of a bacterium, it can kill the bacterium, conferring protection to the human body. Drug discovery, the process of discovering new candidate medications, involves...

Artificial Intelligence is now helping to predict the eventual onset of Alzheimer's disease in healthy people. The research conducted by IBM Research and Pfizer uses short standardised speech tests with better results than current methods.  Alzheimer's is a disease of the brain. Those afflicted by it, typically people over 60 years of age, slowly lose their ability to think, ability to recall from memory and eventually the ability to carry out simple tasks. Prediction of the onset of the disease can lead to the development of a simple, straightforward and accessible metric to help clinicians assess the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in an individual, leading to earlier intervention. There is no effective cure or prevention of this disease but the best way to delay onset and slow progression is to intervene early which may be possible one day.  AI techniques were used to train models using short language samples from the Framingham Heart Study . Sample were selected based on age-g...