AI performs regular blood tests in a guide for cancer treatment
A new AI tool named Scorpio helps doctors to guess that cancer patients will benefit from immunotherapy. This success can make the treatment of individual cancer more accessible and inexpensive globally.
A new artificial intelligence tool, called Scorpio, is making waves in cancer care by helping doctors to decide which patients are likely to benefit from immunotherapy.
Developed by researchers from Memorial Slone Catering Cancer Center (MSK), US and Mount Sinai, equipment can make accurate cancer treatment more accessible and inexpensive worldwide.
“Scorpio tool is a success in cancer care, essentially doctors give doctors a future edge while deciding to be the right choice for immunotherapy for a patient,” Dr. Luke GT Morris, heads and neck surgeons in MSK, indialoday.in.
Unlike traditional approaches, which rely on expensive tumor biopsy or genetic sequencing, Scorpio uses artificial intelligence to analyze full blood count and regular blood tests such as metabolic profiles, with pre -conducted tests in most hospitals.
Immunotherapy, especially immune checkpoint inhibitors, have been a game-changer in oncology, but it does not work for everyone. The Scorpio addresses this challenge by spotting micro biological signals in standard lab results and matching with data from the previous thousands of previous patients.
“Most people who undergo cancer treatment already have regular blood tests. Scorpio applies AI to that data in a different way, adding how thousands of patients responding to immunotherapy. It enables more personal, data-mechanized treatment decisions,” Dr. Morris explains.
About 10,000 patients tested
Makes Scorpio particularly compelling which is a measure of its verification. Researchers tested it on about 10,000 patients in 21 separate cancer types, making this cancer the largest dataset ever in immunotherapy.
It was trained on over 2,000 MSK patients and further tested on global clinical testing data and patients in Mount Sinai.
The Scorpio improved two consecutive FDA-innovative biomarkers, all relying only on regular blood tests and clinical data.
Dr. Says Morris, “It represents a major jump in enabling clever, more equitable immunotherapy decisions, especially in resource-limited settings,” Dr. Morris says.
This device is not meant to change existing biomarker tests such as PD-L1 or tumor mutational burden, but to add another layer of intelligence.
This means that cancer hospitals in low-resources can take better decisions without relying on expensive and less accessible genetic tests.
No special test requires
One of the biggest benefits of Scorpio is access. Patients do not require new or expensive tests. “It is designed to take advantage of regular diagnostic data already available in most hospitals. There is no need for expensive genomic sequencing or tumor biopsy. This approach helps doctors to identify patients without benefiting without adding financial or logistic burden,” Dr. Morris told.
What will happen next?
While Scorpio is not yet available in clinics, researchers are refined for practical use.
Dr. “We are currently working on how to customize the back-end implementation of the complex model. Also, we have come up with some additional refinements that will make the model further improved, and we hope that these additional features will be ready to go soon.”
If successfully implemented, Scorpio can make individual immunotherapy decisions not only in advanced cancer centers but also in small hospitals around the world.
