IBM’s trivia-smart, cloud-based Watson computer system is taking on its next
opponent: cancer.
Fourteen U.S. and Canadian cancer institutes are set to
utilize the super machine’s knowledge to select targeted therapies based on a
tumor’s genes, IBM
announced today.
The technology will allow clinicians to upload a patient’s
DNA to Watson, which will then identify which genes are mutated or responsible
for the Cancer.
“The solution is going to be Watson or something like it,”
oncologist Norman Sharpless of the University of North Carolina Lineberger
Cancer Center told Reuters. “Humans alone can't do it.”
The initial phase of the program will include several
types of mutations, including those found in lymphoma, melanoma, pancreatic,
ovarian, brain, lung, breast and colorectal cancer.
IBM announced that Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s
Hospital of Chicago; BC Cancer Agency; City of Hope; Cleveland Clinic; Duke
Cancer Institute; Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, Nebraska;
McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis; New York
Genome Center; Sanford Health; University of Kansas Cancer Center; University
of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center; University of Southern California
Center for Applied Molecular Medicine; University of Washington Medical Center;
and Yale Cancer Center will begin using Watson for this project by late 2015
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