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Life Sciences @polimi

30.05.2022 17:00

I3LUNG project kicks off

AI-based personalized medical care for lung cancer patients

I³LUNG is a new research initiative that aims to create a cutting-edge decision-making tool to aid both clinicians and patients in selecting the best lung cancer treatment plan, tailored to the specific needs and situation of each individual patient.

Lung cancer was the leading cause for cancer deaths in men and the second for women in 2020, with 370000 deaths in Europe alone. The consortium has thought out and developed this project to address the primary unmet clinical need in the field of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is the lack of biomarkers predicting the response of affected patients to immunotherapy (IO)-based treatments.

The project will use artificial intelligence (AI), in particular deep and machine learning methodologies (DL and ML) to analyze a wide range of information such as baseline clinical features, radiomics, and available biological characteristics of the tumor.

I3LUNG and its partners will have a timeframe of 5 years and a €10M budget to turn their project’s hypothesis in a tangible tool and a new clinical reality. I3LUNG is the first platform enrolling such an important number of patients in both a retrospective (2,000) and prospective (200) manner including such a diversity of multiomic data, arising as an innovative and promising technology to provide an answer to the unmet clinical need of translational research data integration and AI use.

This project is envisioned to both generate novel therapeutic guidelines for clinical practice in lung cancer and support the growth of digital diagnostic tools. AI will push the standard of care towards a more personalized approach for each individual cancer patient. If successful, the approach presented in I³LUNG could in the near future be extended to other cancer types.

Prof. Alessandra Pedrocchi of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, project coordinator for our university, commented:

The team of the Politecnico di Milano, which combines computer science and biomedical engineering experts, aims to study together with medical partners if and how Artificial Intelligence can become an actor in the complex path of therapy selection. The goal is to develop artificial intelligent solutions that are not only capable of accuracy and precision, but also an understandable interlocutor, at the service of clinical experts, their knowledge and experience and worthy of trust for patients.