Cancer AI Alliance: A Collaborative Effort to Transform Cancer Research and Care

Johns Hopkins Joins Cancer AI Alliance | Newswise

Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) will enable new strategies for tackling cancer in a collaborative venture that brings together team science and vast data resources. As part of the new, national Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA), scientists from the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering will develop projects centered on using AI to enable precision cancer care, building better approaches to detect, intercept and treat cancers, considering each patient's unique history and treatment path. "Advances in measurement technologies, data science and AI have the potential to fundamentally transform cancer research and care for the benefit of our patients," says Srinivasan Yegnasubramanian, M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the inHealth Precision Medicine program at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "To fully realize that potential, we must bring together interdisciplinary teams across many domains. Likewise, developing the large-scale, comprehensive and representative datasets that can fuel this AI-enabled transformation will be facilitated by bringing together the leading cancer centers partnering in this unique alliance." Alexis Battle, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering, interim co-director of the Data Science and AI Institute and director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, shares Yegnasubramanian's enthusiasm. "This alliance has the potential to rapidly accelerate innovation in cancer care using AI. Leveraging data across multiple centers will foster intellectual collaboration, allow us to train more powerful models and, critically, ensure that AI methods are effective for diverse patient populations and treatment settings. Johns Hopkins will bring its deep expertise in AI and technology in the school of engineering to bear on the most pressing challenges in cancer medicine."Currently, cancer researchers face two challenges to using AI modeling: accessing the computational resources to quickly analyze large volumes of data, and remaining compliant with the regulatory and privacy requirements associated with sharing data from multiple cancer centers. CAIA will serve an enabling role, providing the computing infrastructure to members of the alliance to process high volumes of cancer data generated during routine cancer care, such as electronic health records, pathology images, medical images and genome sequencing. This data, when paired with AI, could lead to novel insights about tumor biology, treatment resistance and identification of new therapeutic targets. All of this will be achieved while maintaining data security, privacy and alignment with regulatory and ethical standards. Paired with strict governance, CAIA will use a federated AI learning framework in which each cancer center maintains its independent data, and AI models are sent to the data to produce results. Those results are then aggregated across participating members to uncover insights, all without sharing or exposing any of the raw data. The Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which spearheaded the formation and initial funding of CAIA, will serve as the alliance's coordinating center. In addition to Johns Hopkins, participating institutions include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Cancer centers launch Cancer AI Alliance to unlock | Newswise

SEATTLE - Oct. 2, 2024 - Four National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers - Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins - have joined forces and secured funding from AI technology leaders AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft and NVIDIA, to create the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA). The alliance will apply responsible AI to the collective power of the participating cancer centers' data to unlock insights while protecting data security, all to identify more ways to transform cancer research and care. Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which spearheaded the formation of CAIA and secured its initial funding, will serve as the alliance's coordinating center. "Collectively, the data held by the nation's leading cancer centers has been an untapped source of new cancer discoveries that has been out of reach. This alliance helps solve the key technical challenges that will enable us to securely use both AI and massive computational power to find these breakthrough insights and save more lives," said Thomas J. Lynch Jr., MD, Fred Hutch president and director and holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair. The alliance will serve as a collaboration center by providing shared infrastructure and shaping industry standards, which will not only shift researchers from solving problems in isolation to solving them together but support greater health outcomes by exposing data trends for rare cancers and small populations that can result in more meaningful and broadly impactful discoveries. CAIA is supported by more than $40 million in funding and the best and latest AI technology and expertise from AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Slalom to launch the coordination and computation capacity needed to securely bring cancer research and data together at rapid speed using responsible AI. "AWS is proud to support the Cancer AI Alliance and help deliver on its critical mission of transforming cancer research and care. Together, we will accelerate innovation in cancer discovery and treatments, deploy generative AI at scale, and leverage the power, agility, and security of cloud computing to revolutionize health and patient outcomes," said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. "Our collaboration with the Cancer AI Alliance underscores Deloitte's long-standing commitment to help transform the life sciences and healthcare industry," said Jason Girzadas, CEO of Deloitte US. "We are proud to be investing our talent, resources, and innovative AI, cyber security and health equity technologies to help enhance cancer research, improve treatments and address one of the most pressing health challenges of our time." "We are at a breakthrough moment for finding cancer cures thanks to rapid advancement in AI. With leading AI capabilities, diverse data types and standards, and modern cloud infrastructure in place, thoughtful collaboration across leading cancer research centers can help accelerate progress. The Cancer AI Alliance will be integral in this lifesaving work, and we are proud to be supporters," said Juan Lavista Ferres, Corporate Vice President & Chief Data Scientist, Microsoft. "The convergence of AI, multimodal healthcare data and federated learning will usher in a new era for cancer research," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "We are delighted to partner with Cancer AI Alliance to help researchers transform cancer care." Currently, cancer researchers face two challenges to using AI modeling: accessing the computational resources to analyze large volumes of data at speed, and remaining compliant with the regulatory and privacy requirements associated with sharing data from multiple cancer centers. CAIA will serve an enabling role, providing the computing infrastructure to members of the alliance to process high volumes of cancer data generated during routine cancer care, such as electronic health records, pathology images, medical images and genome sequencing. This data, when paired with AI, could lead to novel insights in tumor biology, treatment resistance, and identification of new therapeutic targets. All of this will be developed while maintaining data security, privacy and alignment with regulatory and ethical standards. Paired with strict governance, CAIA will use a federated AI learning framework in which each cancer center maintains its independent data and AI models are sent to the data to produce results. Those results are then aggregated across participating members to uncover insights, all without sharing or exposing any of the raw data behind it. While CAIA is launching with four inaugural cancer center members, four foundational partners and one enabling partner, additional members are expected to be added. The governing committee, comprised of representatives from cancer centers, will determine membership criteria in the months ahead. The alliance's aspirational goal is to support cancer innovation with $1 billion in resources over time. CAIA is expected to be operating by the end of 2024 and producing its first insights by the end of 2025.

Cancer AI Alliance joins medical and tech expertise together with $40M to collaborate on next-gen care

A group of major medical institutions specializing in cancer care have formed a partnership to better take advantage of AI's potential to advance the space. With $40 million of cash and resources from big tech backers, the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA) could be a huge step forward in precision medicine. The members of the alliance are Fred Hutchinson, which will coordinate the new effort, Johns Hopkins, Dana Farber, and Sloan Kettering -- to be precise, the cancer research arms of these organizations. As Fred Hutch President and Director Tom Lynch said on stage at the Intelligent Applications Summit in Seattle, where the institute is based, "we believe this has the potential to be transformative. This represents an unprecedented ability... to agree that working together will enable progress." He gave the example of a patient with a rare pediatric cancer going at one center, but the scientific knowledge to better treat it is siloed at another center, wrapped in proprietary methods and handling protocols. Perhaps in ten years that knowledge will filter out through the scientific literature, but as he pointed out, the kid with a non-responsive leukemia doesn't have that long. AI isn't some miracle worker, of course, and the tug on the heartstrings isn't meant to imply that this problem would quickly and easily be solved by some hypothetical treatment-finding model. But if a treatment or study that could help move things forward is not visible between these organizations, it slows down the whole field. The problem is that sharing data between medical organizations is not simple, due to regulations, safety considerations, and mismatches between formats and databases. Even if the study to help that kid with leukemia at Sloan Kettering is present at Johns Hopkins, there's no guarantee it will be present in a way that can be shared in a legal and technically feasible way. The new organization aims to solve this by means of federated learning, a type of secure data collaboration where the raw data stays private, but can be used for the purposes of training AI and other computational systems. If the research organizations can contribute to a shared goal, like training a drug discovery or diagnostic model for a cancer they all know exists, while complying with HIPAA and other data controls, they will happily do so. Creating a collaborative system under this model is the goal of CAIA, but it's still a ways out, according to Jeff Leek, VP and Chief Data Officer of Fred Hutch. It's certainly possible, he explained, but it's a difficult problem on the tech side that can only be approached once you have the principal participants in place. Lining up these cancer research centers, and binding them with the money and expertise from Microsoft, AWS, Nvidia, and Deloitte was the necessary first step, and not a trivial one. Now the actual shared infrastructure, standards, and specific goals (such as pursuing a model for a specific cancer or treatment) can begin to take shape. The $40 million is a mix of operating cash, services, and intangibles from the four companies mentioned, and will be deployed on an unspecified timeline except that CAIA expects to be functional by the end of this year. The initiative should be "producing its first insights" by the end of 2025.

Cancer centers launch Cancer AI Alliance to unlock discoveries, transform care using cancer data and applied AI

AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft and NVIDIA bring the latest in AI technology, coordination, and compute to the alliance and back with initial funding SEATTLE, October 2, 2024 (Newswire.com) - Four National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers - Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins - have joined forces and secured funding from AI technology leaders AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft and NVIDIA, to create the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA). The alliance will apply responsible AI to the collective power of the participating cancer centers' data to unlock insights while protecting data security, all to identify more ways to transform cancer research and care. Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which spearheaded the formation of CAIA and secured its initial funding, will serve as the alliance's coordinating center. "Collectively, the data held by the nation's leading cancer centers has been an untapped source of new cancer discoveries that has been out of reach. This alliance helps solve the key technical challenges that will enable us to securely use both AI and massive computational power to find these breakthrough insights and save more lives," said Thomas J. Lynch Jr., MD, Fred Hutch president and director and holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair. The alliance will serve as a collaboration center by providing shared infrastructure and shaping industry standards, which will not only shift researchers from solving problems in isolation to solving them together but support greater health outcomes by exposing data trends for rare cancers and small populations that can result in more meaningful and broadly impactful discoveries. CAIA is supported by more than $40 million in funding and the best and latest AI technology and expertise from AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Slalom to launch the coordination and computation capacity needed to securely bring cancer research and data together at rapid speed using responsible AI. "AWS is proud to support the Cancer AI Alliance and help deliver on its critical mission of transforming cancer research and care. Together, we will accelerate innovation in cancer discovery and treatments, deploy generative AI at scale, and leverage the power, agility, and security of cloud computing to revolutionize health and patient outcomes," said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. "Our collaboration with the Cancer AI Alliance underscores Deloitte's long-standing commitment to help transform the life sciences and healthcare industry," said Jason Girzadas, CEO of Deloitte US. "We are proud to be investing our talent, resources, and innovative AI, cyber security and health equity technologies to help enhance cancer research, improve treatments and address one of the most pressing health challenges of our time." "We are at a breakthrough moment for finding cancer cures thanks to rapid advancement in AI. With leading AI capabilities, diverse data types and standards, and modern cloud infrastructure in place, thoughtful collaboration across leading cancer research centers can help accelerate progress. The Cancer AI Alliance will be integral in this lifesaving work, and we are proud to be supporters," said Juan Lavista Ferres, Corporate Vice President & Chief Data Scientist, Microsoft. "The convergence of AI, multimodal healthcare data and federated learning will usher in a new era for cancer research," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "We are delighted to partner with Cancer AI Alliance to help researchers transform cancer care." Currently, cancer researchers face two challenges to using AI modeling: accessing the computational resources to analyze large volumes of data at speed, and remaining compliant with the regulatory and privacy requirements associated with sharing data from multiple cancer centers. CAIA will serve an enabling role, providing the computing infrastructure to members of the alliance to process high volumes of cancer data generated during routine cancer care, such as electronic health records, pathology images, medical images and genome sequencing. This data, when paired with AI, could lead to novel insights in tumor biology, treatment resistance, and identification of new therapeutic targets. All of this will be developed while maintaining data security, privacy and alignment with regulatory and ethical standards. Paired with strict governance, CAIA will use a federated AI learning framework in which each cancer center maintains its independent data and AI models are sent to the data to produce results. Those results are then aggregated across participating members to uncover insights, all without sharing or exposing any of the raw data behind it. While CAIA is launching with four inaugural cancer center members, four foundational partners and one enabling partner, additional members are expected to be added. The governing committee, comprised of representatives from cancer centers, will determine membership criteria in the months ahead. The alliance's aspirational goal is to support cancer innovation with $1 billion in resources over time. CAIA is expected to be operating by the end of 2024 and producing its first insights by the end of 2025. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is one of the world's leading centers of cancer research and treatment. Dana-Farber's mission is to reduce the burden of cancer through scientific inquiry, clinical care, education, community engagement, and advocacy. Dana-Farber is a federally designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. We provide the latest treatments in cancer for adults through Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center and for children through Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Dana-Farber is the only hospital nationwide with a top 5 U.S. News & World Report Best Cancer Hospital ranking in both adult and pediatric care. As a global leader in oncology, Dana-Farber is dedicated to a unique and equal balance between cancer research and care, translating the results of discovery into new treatments for patients locally and around the world, offering more than 1,100 clinical trials. Fred Hutch Cancer Center Fred Hutch Cancer Center unites individualized care and advanced research to provide the latest cancer treatment options while accelerating discoveries that prevent, treat and cure cancer and infectious diseases worldwide. Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch is an independent, nonprofit organization and the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in Washington. We have earned a global reputation for our track record of discoveries in cancer, infectious disease and basic research, including important advances in bone marrow transplantation, immunotherapy, HIV/AIDS prevention and COVID-19 vaccines. Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy and related services. Fred Hutch also serves as UW Medicine's cancer program. Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center As one of only 57 cancer centers in the country designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has active programs in clinical research, laboratory research, education, community outreach, and prevention and control. The Kimmel Cancer Center is one of only two Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the state of Maryland. Whiting School of Engineering At the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, we advance data- and science-driven engineering discovery, innovation, and systems applications to help everyone live longer and healthier lives and empower communities and society to thrive even in extreme environments. With more than 26 research centers and institutes - including the Data Science and AI Institute - and through strong community, university, and industry partnerships, Hopkins Engineering is a driving force in the future of technology, health care, and engineering education. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center The people of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) are united by a singular mission: ending cancer for life. Our specialized care teams provide personalized, compassionate, expert care to patients of all ages. Informed by basic research done at our Sloan Kettering Institute, scientists across MSK collaborate to conduct innovative translational and clinical research that is driving a revolution in our understanding of cancer as a disease and improving the ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat it. MSK is dedicated to training the next generation of scientists and clinicians, who go on to pursue our mission at MSK and around the globe. One of the world's most respected comprehensive centers devoted exclusively to cancer, we have been recognized as one of the top two cancer hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report for more than 30 years. www.mskcc.org

Can AI cure cancer? New alliance unites tech giants and big research orgs in quest for breakthroughs

An unprecedented alliance of four national cancer research organizations, spearheaded by Seattle's Fred Hutch Cancer Center, will share data and computing power in a bid to use artificial intelligence to battle cancer. The newly established Cancer AI Alliance brings together the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Fred Hutch, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins, along with Amazon Web Services, Deloitte, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. It's supported with an initial $40 million in funding, technology, and other resources from AWS, Deloitte, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Slalom. Fred Hutch will serve as the coordinating center for the initiative. "What was interesting about this whole process was how we were able to bring together these four incredible cancer centers, and these four major tech companies," said Dr. Thomas Lynch Jr., the Fred Hutch president, in an interview after announcing the initiative on stage at Madrona's IA Summit 2024 in Seattle. "All of us tend to be competitors with each other in most of what we do, but for this project, people were able to bury that competitive spirit and bring out a collaborative spirit," Lynch said. "I just could not be more excited about what this could offer." Lynch noted that academic medical research institutes don't normally have access to the tools, GPUs, and computing power necessary to train and run AI models at scale. "This enables us to have access to the very best tools in AI, to be able to use the incredibly rich data that exists in all of our centers," he said. "We hope this is just the start. We hope this is not just four centers. We hope that we bring in many more of the nation's top cancer centers in this process." In addition to taking on new research challenges together, the cancer centers say they will share infrastructure and collaborate on industry standards. By pooling their data and collaborating, one of the goals is to expose the underlying data trends for rare forms of cancer and and smaller populations. Will AI cure cancer? "AI is going to be part of curing cancer," Lynch said. "It's going to be part of the answer."

AWS, Nvidia and others back new AI-enabled cancer research initiative - SiliconANGLE

AWS, Nvidia and others back new AI-enabled cancer research initiative Five major tech companies have committed more than $40 million to CAIA, a new research initiative dedicated to improving cancer care. CAIA launched today during a Seattle event hosted by Madrona Venture Group. CAIA stands for Cancer AI Alliance, a nod to the fact that the participants will use artificial intelligence to support their clinical work. The launch of the initiative was led by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The institute also helped secure CAIA's initial funding. Fred Hutchinson's responsibilities going forward will include, among others, coordinating research collaborations among CAIA members. In addition to Fred Hutchinson, CAIA includes three other cancer research institutions on launch. They are the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. The latter institute is affiliated with John Hopkins University, which will also participate through its Whiting School of Engineering. The tech firms that provided CAIA's initial funding, in turn, include Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd and Slalom Consulting LLC, two major players in the information technology services market, contributed as well. "AWS is proud to support the Cancer AI Alliance and help deliver on its critical mission of transforming cancer research and care," said AWS Chief Executive Officer Matt Garman. "Together, we will accelerate innovation in cancer discovery and treatments, deploy generative AI at scale, and leverage the power, agility, and security of cloud computing to revolutionize health and patient outcomes." One of CAIA's goals is to advance the development of industry standards that can support cancer research. Additionally, the group will provide participating medical institutes with infrastructure for processing the data they collect during cancer care delivery. That data includes medical images, electronic health records and other files. CAIA members plan to collaborate on research projects through an approach called federated AI. Sometimes, clinical collaborations require participants to share raw medical data, which can create cybersecurity risks. CAIA says its federated AI implementation mitigates those risks. According to Fred Hutchinson, the technology will enable researchers to analyze a dataset using an AI model and make the results available to colleagues without sharing the underlying data. This avoids the cybersecurity issues that can emerge when medical records are moved between different organizations. Under CAIA's federated AI framework, each participating research center will maintain its own separate data repositories and AI models. CAIA hopes to advance cancer research in multiple ways. The group envisions its members collaborating to uncover new insights into tumor biology. Another focus of CAIA's research efforts will be identifying therapeutic targets, which are molecules or processes associated with cancer that could potentially be targeted to improve treatment. "The convergence of AI, multimodal healthcare data and federated learning will usher in a new era for cancer research," said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.