• Cells change shape when they are treated with drugs 
• New AI technology can accurately show how a cell responds to a drug based on changes to its 3D shape
• The tech will speed up the development of drugs for a range of diseases by around six years – as years of experiments can be cut from the current preclinical process, and drugs will be less likely to fail in clinical trials
• The AI tool is being further developed for patient benefit and commercial use by a new company, Sentinal 4D

Scientists have developed a revolutionary AI ‘fingerprint’ technology that can accurately show how cancer cells respond to new drugs, by simply observing changes to their shape.

The new technology, which has been developed by a team at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, will allow researchers to quickly assess the ability of new drugs to reach their intended target, slashing years off the drug development process – allowing new drugs to reach patients faster.

The scientists believe their approach could also save millions of pounds by reducing investment and effort in projects that go on to fail.

Crucially, the tech helps scientists match the right drugs to the right patients, by enabling them to design clinical trials for specific cancer sub-types at a much earlier stage – thereby avoiding costly clinical trial failures.

The team from The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), trained the AI technology using almost 100,000 3D images of melanoma skin cancer cells – taken with cutting-edge microscopy – and geometric deep learning to analyse the information about the shape of the cells.

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