We Fund Data Science Projects
Komen is leveraging its premier grantmaking capabilities to identify and support big data research resources and projects. This continues to put the patient at the center of cancer innovation to inform and accelerate the pace of breast cancer research, also allowing researchers to use real‐time, but also real‐life data to revolutionize the way cancer is understood and treated. Some examples of big data research projects we support appear below.
Komen Scholar Regina Barzilay, Ph.D.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA
The current ability to predict which breast cancer patients are likely to get recurrence is limited, leading to some patients being over-treated, others getting the personalized treatment they need. Mammograms contain multiple cues about cancer characteristics and its future progression, most too subtle for human eye to capture and not utilized in the current progression model. Dr. Barzilay and her...
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The current ability to predict which breast cancer patients are likely to get recurrence is limited, leading to some patients being over-treated, others getting the personalized treatment they need. Mammograms contain multiple cues about cancer characteristics and its future progression, most too subtle for human eye to capture and not utilized in the current progression model. Dr. Barzilay and her team propose to augment existing disease progression approaches with deep learning models that utilize raw imaging data, in addition to traditional risk variables. By utilizing this rich information in powerful deep learning models, they can make more precise predictions about expected outcomes, including predicting recurrences and their type (local vs. non-local ones).
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Alex Cheng, Ph.D.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN
Chronic disease affects patient quality of life through symptoms of the disease and the work of receiving treatment. While the effects of illness are well investigated, the burden of treatment is not commonly studied or monitored. Dr. Cheng and his mentor, Komen Scholar Dr. Levy, found that stage III patients had more appointments, spent more time in clinic and admitted...
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Chronic disease affects patient quality of life through symptoms of the disease and the work of receiving treatment. While the effects of illness are well investigated, the burden of treatment is not commonly studied or monitored. Dr. Cheng and his mentor, Komen Scholar Dr. Levy, found that stage III patients had more appointments, spent more time in clinic and admitted to the hospital in the first 18 months after diagnosis compared to stage I and II patients. By quantifying burden of treatment across other clinical settings, they propose to identify high-risk groups that could benefit from interventions to decrease patient work and improve outcomes.
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Komen Scholar Mia Levy, M.D., Ph.D.
Rush Cancer Center, Chicago, IL
Precision cancer medicine—cancer therapy regimens designed to target a patient’s individual cancer biology—promises to transform the way we treat breast cancer. However, recent enthusiasm has been curbed by the difficulty of delivering this new type of care to patients. Dr. Levy will develop and evaluate new approaches for helping doctors apply the results of tumor genetic testing to the care...
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Precision cancer medicine—cancer therapy regimens designed to target a patient’s individual cancer biology—promises to transform the way we treat breast cancer. However, recent enthusiasm has been curbed by the difficulty of delivering this new type of care to patients. Dr. Levy will develop and evaluate new approaches for helping doctors apply the results of tumor genetic testing to the care of patients with breast cancer. This new type of consultation service will be supported by a set of clinical decision support tools integrating an expanding set of information on open and completed breast cancer clinical trials. They expect that patients whose doctors use the service will have better outcomes than patients whose doctors do not, delivering the promise of precision cancer medicine.
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Komen Scholar Sohrab Shah, Ph.D.
Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
Triple negative breast cancer remains one of the most lethal form of breast cancer. In addition to a limited number of treatments available, it is not known how and why triple negative breast cancer patients often suffer treatment failure. Being able to identify these at-risk patients would allow for better treatment management and outcomes. Dr. Shah and his team will...
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Triple negative breast cancer remains one of the most lethal form of breast cancer. In addition to a limited number of treatments available, it is not known how and why triple negative breast cancer patients often suffer treatment failure. Being able to identify these at-risk patients would allow for better treatment management and outcomes. Dr. Shah and his team will study how mutations in the DNA of triple negative breast cancer cells can be used to discover new groups of patients. They will use state-of-the–art DNA sequencing technologies to measure the DNA of individual cancer cells and therefore create an ultra-detailed picture of how these cancers are changing over time. They hope these detailed views will reveal previously unseen patterns of DNA mutations, thereby providing new directions to pursue treatment approaches.
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