Predicting the response to immunotherapy using artificial intelligence

A study published in The Lancet Oncology establishes for the first time that artificial intelligence can process medical images to extract biological and clinical information. By designing an algorithm and developing it to analyse CT scan images, medical researchers at Gustave Roussy, CentraleSupélec, Inserm, Paris-Sud University and TheraPanacea have created a so-called radiomic signature. This signature defines the level of lymphocyte infiltration of a tumour and provides a predictive score for the efficacy of immunotherapy in the patient. In the future, physicians might thus be able to use imaging to identify biological phenomena in a tumour located in any part of the body without having to perform a biopsy. Until now, no marker could accurately identify those patients likely to respond to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy in a situation in which only 15 to 30 percent of patients do respond to such treatment.