MSK in the news this week…
The Gunner Rätsch Lab at Sloan Kettering Institute is working on training an artificial intelligence to identify similarities between cancer cases that human doctors might miss. The software algorithm combs through over 100 million sentences taken from anonymized clinical notes of 200,000 people with cancer, and sorts symptoms, medical histories, and doctors’ observations into clusters. These clusters are then analyzed to look for patterns and connections between different comments and treatments. “We’re looking to exhaust all that data to try to find something interesting” says Rätsch.
Previous studies showed a murine norovirus that can enhance intestinal immune system development. Researchers from the Eric Pamer Lab at Sloan Kettering Institute have identified a molecule that mimics this norovirus, which reduces Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE), a very serious hospital acquired pathogen, in mice. This molecule, a synthetic ligand called Resiquimod (R848) mimics the virus-derived RNA and binds directly to the protein TLR7 in the immune pathway. However, lead author Michael Abt warns, “It’s going to take a lot more research before it can get us to an actual therapeutic.”
M.C. Abt et al., “TLR-7 activation enhances IL-22 mediated colonization resistance against vancomycin,” Science Translational Medicine, doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf33802, 2016.
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the philanthropic organization of the Houston-based couple, are donating $7.2 million to find innovative solutions to solve the rising costs of pharmaceuticals and provide more equitable access for all patients. This donation is spread across four organizations, all of which are focused on finding models to link drug pricing to health outcomes. Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Evidence Driven Drug Pricing Project, run by Peter Bach, the Director for the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, will receive $4.7 million of the total grant. The grant will help evaluate alternative payment models and link the actual outcomes of a medicine to the price paid, rather than having a set price regardless of whether it works or not for a particular patient.