An AI-based blood test devised by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has been proven to speed up pancreatic cancer treatment. Here are all the details.

In what appears to be a major breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment, a new AI-based blood test method has proven its worth in reducing the time for doctors to learn if the treatment is working. Called the ARTEMIS-DELFI, this AI-based blood test could change the way humanity deals with one of the deadliest cancer types known and give patients more chance to survive.

Developed by the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, the ARTEMIS-DELFI test can study the DNA fragments in the blood sample and utilise machine learning to quickly conclude whether the patient is responding to the treatment. If adopted widely by doctors across the world, it could revolutionise the field of cancer in the world of medical science.

The ARTEMIS-DELFI test focuses on studying DNA fragments in the patients’ bloodstream. Once the data is recorded, it identifies the patterns in the fragments and uses machine learning to identify if the medicine is doing its job. The process eradicates the need for a tumor biopsy, something that increases the time to understand the same.

ARTEMIS-DELFI, along with WGMAF, were sent for CheckPAC and PACTO – two major clinical trials. Both tests were performed on blood samples from patients with pancreatic cancer. Although both tests predicted treatment outcomes within two months, thus outperforming the standard imaging and molecular markers used in existing tests, it was ARTEMIS-DELFI that proved to be more effective and practical.

The WGMAF test relied on tissue from the tumor cell and compared it with DNA to figure out the outcome. However, this test wasn’t as effective the AI-based one and was thus not given the green flag.

“The ‘fast-fail’ ARTEMIS-DELFI approach may be particularly useful in pancreatic cancer, where changing therapies quickly could be helpful in patients who do not respond to the initial therapy. It’s simpler, likely less expensive, and more broadly applicable than using tumor samples,” says Carolyn Hruban, lead study author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

With the tests concluded, all that remains to be seen is whether ARTEMIS-DELFI helps doctors find effective therapy and improve patient outcomes more efficiently. (Financial Express)

•An AI-based blood test devised by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has been proven to speed up pancreatic cancer treatment. Here are all the details.