NYGC, IBM Watson Group announce collaboration to advance genomic medicine

IBM and NYGC will test a unique Watson prototype designed specifically for genomic research as a tool to help oncologists deliver more personalized care to cancer patients.

NYGC and its medical partner institutions plan to initially evaluate Watson’s ability to help oncologists develop more personalized care to patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive and malignant brain cancer that kills more than 13,000 people in the US each year.

Despite groundbreaking discoveries into the genetic drivers of cancers like glioblastoma, few patients benefit from personalized treatment that is tailored to their individual cancer mutations.

Clinicians lack the tools and time required to bring DNA-based treatment options to their patients and to do so, they must correlate data from genome sequencing to reams of medical journals, new studies and clinical records — at a time when medical information is doubling every five years.

This joint NYGC Watson initiative aims to speed up this complex process, identifying patterns in genome sequencing and medical data to unlock insights that will help clinicians bring the promise of genomic medicine to their patients.

The combination of NYGC’s genomic and clinical expertise coupled with the power of IBM’s Watson system will enable further development and refinement of the Watson tool with the shared goal of helping medical professionals develop personalized cancer care.

The new cloud-based Watson system will be designed to analyze genetic data along with comprehensive biomedical literature and drug databases. Watson can continually ‘learn’ as it encounters new patient scenarios, and as more information becomes available through new medical research, journal articles and clinical studies.

Given the depth and speed of Watson’s ability to review massive databases, the goal of the collaboration is to increase the number of patients who have access to care options tailored to their disease’s DNA.

New York Genome Center CEO president and scientific director Dr Robert Darnell noted since the human genome was first mapped more than a decade ago, the company has made tremendous progress in understanding the genetic drivers of disease.

"The real challenge before us is how to make sense of massive quantities of genetic data and translate that information into better treatments for patients.

"Applying the cognitive computing power of Watson is going to revolutionize genomics and accelerate the opportunity to improve outcomes for patients with deadly diseases by providing personalized treatment," Darnell added.

Watson will complement rapid genome sequencing and is expected to dramatically reduce the time it takes to correlate an individual’s genetic mutations with reams of medical literature, study findings, and therapeutic indications that may be relevant.

The intention is to provide comprehensive information to enable clinicians to consider a variety of treatment options that the clinician can tailor to their patient’s genetic mutations. It will also help NYGC scientists understand the data detailing gene sequence variations between normal and cancerous biopsies of brain tumors.

The goal is to have the Watson genomics prototype assist clinicians in providing personalized genomic analytics information as part of a NYGC clinical research study. The solution has been under development for the past decade in IBM’s Computational Biology Center at IBM Research.

New York State is at the forefront of advancing medical science and commercialization. Governor Andrew M Cuomo recently proposed $105m to fund a partnership between NYGC and the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research to advance genomics research.

This investment to enhance the state’s genomic medicine capabilities, together with NYGC’s acquisition of Illumina’s HiSeq X Ten whole human genome sequencing system, will accelerate the availability of valuable genomic information in New York.

IBM is NYGC’s Founding Technology Member and will advance the organization’s goals of translating genomic research into clinical solutions for serious disease through the collaboration of medicine, science and technology.