This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
MSKCC expert: Watson genomic sequencing service ‘expands expertise’ in precision medicine
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The launch of the Watson for Genomics sequencing service has the potential to bring precision medicine to cancer treatment centers worldwide, according to a press release issued by IBM Watson Health and Quest Diagnostics.
As a part of the launch, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center will help provide supplemental scientific data with OncoKB — a precision oncology knowledgebase to help inform physicians of precision treatment options for cancer patients
“This service combines Quest’s state-of-the-art tumor analysis and national access with the cognitive computing of IBM’s Watson and the deep cancer treatment expertise of Memorial Sloan Kettering,” Jay G. Wohlgemuth, MD, chief medical officer and senior vice president of research and development at Quest Diagnostics, said in a press release. “This is a powerful combination that we believe it will leap frog conventional genomic services as a better approach for identifying targeted oncology treatments.”
The launch of the sequencing service — which combines cognitive computing with genomic tumor sequencing — marked the first time that Watson for Genomics has been made widely available to patients and physicians across the United States.
“The beauty of Watson is that it can be used to dramatically scale access to knowledge and scientific insight, whether a patient is being treated in an urban academic medical center or a rural community clinic,” John Kelly III, PhD, senior vice president of IBM Research and Cognitive Solutions, said in the release. “Through this collaboration with the cancer community’s leading clinical and pathology experts, thousands of more patients can potentially benefit from the world’s growing body of knowledge about this disease.”
The service involves laboratory sequencing and analysis of a tumor’s genomic makeup to reveal mutations that can be associated with targeted therapies and clinical trials, which are then compared against approximately 10,000 scientific articles and 100 new clinical trials every month, as well as carefully annotated rules created by leading oncologists, the release said.
“Precision medicine is changing the way we treat cancer and giving new hope to people living with the disease,” Wohlgemuth added. “However, access to genomic sequencing and tumor analysis required to determine appropriate precision medicine treatments for a patient can be a challenge.
HemOnc Today spoke with Paul Sabbatini, MD, deputy physician-in-chief for clinical research and medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, to discuss the institution’s collaboration with Watson for Genomics, and the future implications the service may have in precision medicine.
Question: How does the Watson solution work?
Answer: The idea is to use the computing power of Watson to analyze clinical characteristics, genomic characteristics — which mutations are found in tumors — and the available medical literature and provide some recommendations for treatment based on this information.
Q: What is Memorial Sloan Kettering’s involvement in the Watson-Powered Genomic Sequencing Service?
A: Memorial Sloan Kettering is providing the intellectual input, using our disease-specific experts to “train” Watson. Human effort is required on the front end to help determine which data points would be important to include to help Watson provide treatment recommendations.
Q: What kind of new data will M emorial S loan K ettering be adding to Watson's extensive corpus?
A: Memorial Sloan Kettering has an extensive program to “annotate” or describe the clinical importance of the various mutations. The new ability to test tumors for specific mutations generates a significant amount of data. Our experts organize this data and describe how it may affect both standard and investigational treatment offerings. In simple terms, they help the clinician decide what the findings may mean for a particular patient.
Q: How can the Watson-Powered Genomic Sequencing Service help M emorial S loan K ettering bring precision cancer treatments to its patients?
A: The volume of data being generated now for individual patients is large, and after appropriate training, Watson will be able to organize the results in a meaningful way and hopefully avoid the need for as much human interpretation in the future. This will help expand the expertise found at Memorial Sloan Kettering to others.
Q: How does Memorial Sloan Kettering plan on incorporating this service into its treatment options for the future?
A: As the Watson project matures, we will have access to it for our patients as others will be using it as well.
Q: What are the clinical implications of the Watson-Powered Genomic Sequencing Service for cancer research?
A: Cognitive computing has the ability to assimilate large bodies of information and provide a “weight” of what is more important versus less important to consider based on the information that it was trained on.
Q: How does this change the future at Memorial Sloan Kettering?
A: The amount of data generated for an individual patient will only increase as time goes on and assistance in distilling it to what is important for the busy clinician will become ever more important.
Q: What do you think this service does for the c ancer m oonshot initiative?
A: The initiative is heavily invested in bringing precision medicine to all patients and this program is another step in this direction. – by Kristie L. Kahl
For more information:
Paul Sabbatini , MD, can be reached at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065.
Disclosure: Sabbatini reports no relevant financial disclosures.