THE FUTURE OF CANCER RESEARCH

Since the founding of the Centre for Cancer Immunology at Southampton in 2018, cancer research at the University has developed at pace, uncovering new knowledge and delivering better treatments for patients. We spoke to Professor Peter Johnson to find out about the current state of the cancer research landscape, the progress that has been made and where the next big breakthroughs might be found.

“We’ve seen enormous shifts in new ways of diagnosing cancer and new ways of treating cancer in the last few years. We have deepened our understanding of the molecular drivers of what makes cancers develop in the first place, which has allowed us to start looking at new types of tests to see if we can find it in people before they have symptoms.

We’re running large programmes for earlier diagnosis, which look at lots of different markers in the bloodstream and tissues. For example, we are taking samples from the lining of people’s noses to see if there are changes in the epithelium there, which might reflect early lung cancer developments. This tissue is the same tissue that is found in the lungs where the cancer develops.

At the same time, we’ve also seen huge changes in the way we use the immune system to treat cancer and sophisticated ways of harnessing the immune response to recognise cancers.

In doing both of those things, we’ve generated huge amounts of data about molecular changes, whether it’s changes that are causing cancer or changes that result from immunotherapy treatments.

All this work requires very intensive, high volume data analysis to allow us to derive the maximum benefit from the tests. It’s not just about the here and now, but making sure that the results constitute a resource for the future, to allow us to do new analysis as new insights come to light. Having the ability to curate and analyse these very large data sets is going to be critically important. We have to put ourselves in a good position to do that: linking between cancer scientists and colleagues elsewhere in the University who can do complex data analysis.

We also need to develop the kind of repositories that can hold personal data securely and make sure that we have the right layers of security in place. We need to ensure the right people can access that data in the right ways, allowing them to see the information they need without other personal details. At Southampton we’ve been at the forefront of developing these trusted research environments.

There is a very fertile relationship between the NHS, the University and our commercial partners, which allows us to maximize the benefit of this very complicated data: a real synergy between biology, data science, the clinical and commercial.

“We’ve only started to scratch the surface of the information available to us. These data will be very important resources for the future as we can search them to understand how to predict the likelihood of a person developing cancer, anticipate their reaction to certain treatments, and develop better outcomes for patients.”

Professor Peter Johnson is a Professor of Medical Oncology at the University and the Director of the Southampton Cancer Research UK Centre.

He is a leading expert in lymphoma, a cancer that affects the body’s diseasefighting white blood cells.

“ You hear a lot about big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), but at Southampton we’re actually doing it on the ground right now. We’re uniquely well placed to do this work, and what we’re already doing forms an important basis to build on for the future. I hope we can take this expertise out into other disease settings beyond cancer –the possibilities are endless.”

The future of healthcare - harnessing the power of information

Professor Age Chapman, Professor of Computer Science, talks about the challenges and potential of AI in a medical health research context.

“One of the big problems when you talk about AI and health is that people become anxious that AI will result in removing the clinician, but that’s absolutely not the aim. AI can be used to aid doctors and healthcare professionals in making more informed decisions.

AI allows us to harness the power of information over millions of people and all their health needs: not just their genetics or the diseases that we know they have, but also their lifestyle choices, the food they’re eating, the weather they’re exposed to and more. From that we can identify precise interventions and mitigations for their health issues.

The power of this kind of approach is the amount of information you can uncover with the data. We can take learnings all the way down to the individual level, but you can also apply it to a community and expand the concept of social care or public health. It’s a way to holistically consider what a community wellness effort looks like.

There’s also the question of fairness. All data is biased, and we’re finding that large medical data sets often draw heavily from middle-class, Northern European individuals. Sometimes when we try to correct this, there’s a challenge around how to source that data in a fair and open way, with full consent from those communities who are under-represented in the data.

“ The time is ripe for us to be working together to co- design a healthy society, to bring technologists and doctors, but also the public, the patients, the carers, the government, everybody who’s involved in our health and our health decisions together to revolutionise healthcare.”