Join us for “Adventures in Text Mining: Applications, Ethics, and Cancer Care”

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Promotional banner for Adventures in Text Mining eventJoin us for our webinar “Adventures in Text Mining: Applications, Ethics, and Cancer Care” on October 16 from 12:00 PM-1:00 PM Eastern Time.

What is Text Mining?
Text mining helps researchers sift through mountains of documents, clinical notes, and research papers to find important patterns and information quickly. Dr. Manika Lamba (Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Oklahoma) will introduce the topic through the lens of her work in digital libraries and information organization.

Applications in Cancer Care
Dr. Anyi Li (Chief, Associate Attendings, Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering) will explain how applying text mining technologies to clinical notes at MSK has automated radiation therapy processes, saving clinician time and allowing for risk event analysis and mitigation. He will address the ethical aspects of text mining in healthcare, including patient privacy and responsible data use.

Applications in the Published Literature
Text mining can allow researchers to analyze the vast volume of scientific literature. Dr. Zhiyong Lu (Senior Investigator, NIH/NLM, Deputy Director for Literature Search, NCBI) will showcase his work mining the literature in PubMed, which led to tools including the Best Match algorithm and LitCovid. 

Register now. All registrants will receive a link to the event recording, whether or not they can attend synchronously.

About the speakers:

Dr. Manika Lamba is an Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Oklahoma. Previously, she served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the HathiTrust Research Center, University of Illinois. Her research broadly falls under computational social science and science of science. She primarily focuses on using computational methods, such as text mining and machine learning, to provide better solutions for information retrieval and organization of digital libraries.

Dr. Anyi Li, Associate Attending Physicist and Chief of Computer Service at the Department of Medical Physics at MSK, leads a talented team comprising mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and data scientists. Together, they collaborate with the Division of Clinical Physics and the Department of Radiation Oncology to harness artificial intelligence, operational research algorithms, and big data. Their objective is to optimize radiation therapy plans, enhance the efficiency of the radiation treatment process from start to finish, develop a data platform for clinical decision support, and improve patient safety by managing accumulated radiation doses. They utilize the latest language models to analyze clinical event timelines and construct workflow knowledge graphs, which improve the radiation therapy workflow and provide valuable insights to the clinical team. With a background as a theoretical nuclear physicist and research scientist tackling NP-hard (nondeterministic polynomial time) problems, Dr. Li transitioned into big data engineering and AI, bringing experience from positions at Yahoo and IBM Watson Health.

Dr. Zhiyong Lu is a tenured Senior Investigator at the NIH/NLM IPR, leading research in biomedical text and image processing, information retrieval, and AI/machine learning. In his role as Deputy Director for Literature Search at NCBI, Dr. Lu oversees the overall R&D efforts to improve literature search and information access in resources like PubMed and LitCovid, which are used by millions worldwide each day. Additionally, Dr. Lu is Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). With over 400 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Lu is a highly cited author, and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI).

25 Years of MedlinePlus

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The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s consumer health information online resource, MedlinePlus, just turned 25 years old! For a historical look back – see:

25 Years of Consumer Health Information: MedlinePlus Celebrates Its Silver Anniversary – NLM Musings from the Mezzanine (nih.gov)

Soon after NLM made the PubMed database (a free index to the biomedical and life sciences literature aimed primarily at health care professionals and researchers) available in 1996, NLM realized that the need for accessible and authoritative health information extended beyond health professionals to the general public.

And so MedlinePlus.gov came online starting in Fall 1998 and has continued to grow and evolve ever since.

Some noteworthy MdlinePlus enhancements over the years have been the inclusion of quality health information in Spanish, information about herbs and supplements, drug information summaries, medical test summaries, information about genes and genetics conditions, healthy recipes, and over 1000 health topics.

Most recently, in 2020, another NLM resource, Genetics Home Reference (GHR), was incorporated into MedlinePlus in the form of the MedlinePlus Genetics module that includes easy-to-understand “Help Me Understand Genetics” pages intended for patients.

Also worthy of highlighting have been NLM’s efforts to expand the reach of this valuable consumer health information by creating MedlinePlus Connect, “a free service that links electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, and other health IT systems to relevant, authoritative, and up-to-date health information from NLM’s MedlinePlus health information resource and other NIH websites.” To understand how MedlinePlus Connect works, click here. The National Cancer Institute has also collaborated “to expand the scope of content in MedlinePlus Connect”.

Learn more:

Burgess S, Dennis S, Lanka S, Miller N, Potvin J. MedlinePlus Connect: Linking Health IT Systems to Consumer Health Information. IT Prof. 2012 May;14(3):22-28. doi: 10.1109/mitp.2012.19. PMID: 23066351; PMCID: PMC3469315.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Ancient Viruses Contributing to Cancer, Enhancer for CAR-T Cell Therapy, and More

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  • In a preclinical study, scientists from Yale University used therapy carrying antibodies redesigned from lupus to target tumors. The novel approach allows the antibodies to get “unnoticed into the tumor environment”, which makes this therapy very targeted. This results in a “reduction in toxic side effects experienced by patients when less precise therapies kill off healthy tissue.” The study was published in ACS Central Science.
  • Researchers from Rockefeller University discovered that sensory nerves within breast tumors strongly influence cancer progression and metastasizing. This discovery opens new possibilities for stopping breast cancer growth. The study also determined that the TACR1 antagonist aprepitant, an FDA-approved drug for nausea prevention, may prevent cancer growth and metastasis by targeting neuron chemistry/breast cancer interplay. The study was published in Nature.
  • Researchers from Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute designed a protein that allowed the prolongation of the potency of CAR-T Cell therapy, a crucially important type of cancer treatment. The study was published in Nature Biotechnology.
  • The latest cohort study by a group of researchers from multiple medical centers established that people at risk of pancreatic cancer have better survival rates if they undergo annual imaging as part of preventive surveillance. The study’s findings may lead to early detection of pancreatic cancer in high-risk individuals and improved survival rates. The study was published in JAMA Oncology.
  • In the latest research on the subject, researchers from the University of Colorado established that pieces of DNA “left behind by viruses that infected primate ancestors tens of millions of years ago” and present inside the human genome, if reawakened, may help cancer “survive and thrive.” The findings suggest that “silencing certain endogenous retroviruses” can help cancer treatments become more efficient. The study was published in Science Advances.
  • A new study from the American Cancer Society that “used 2019 information from nationally representative data on cancer incidence and mortality, as well as risk factor prevalence” found that “four in 10 cancer diagnoses and almost half of all cancer deaths of adults over the age of 30 in the United States could be attributed to modifiable risk factors.” The article published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians reports in some detail epidemiology correlating the risk factors with different cancer types.