The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and its hospital partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have announced the opening of their new joint Integrated Pathology Unit (IPU). England’s first centre of its kind is set to make significant improvements in cancer diagnosis and treatment – by combining pioneering digital imaging with artificial intelligence.
The Unit will enable researchers - who are particularly focusing on clinical trial research - to make discoveries to develop new tests for cancer and speed up the diagnosis process for results.
The IPU – funded by The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Royal Marsden and ICR Biomedical Research Centre – is the first Unit of its kind in England, with access to a large portfolio of pioneering clinical trials.
It will bring pathology into the modern era through state-of-the-art laboratory techniques, sophisticated computing tools and AI, helping pathologists lead new research programmes and improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer for patients at The Royal Marsden and other cancer centres.
Pathologists working at the new Unit, based in the NIHR Centre for Molecular Pathology in Sutton, are already digitising tissue samples taken from patients being treated at The Royal Marsden, or patients undergoing clinical trials in other cancer centres around the UK – as well as tissue research images generated in the IPU or other ICR research laboratories.
Researchers at the IPU – which is one of the most advanced translational digital pathology operations in Europe – are also combining digital pathology, tissue hybridisation and AI technologies to help better understand key aspects of cancer. New technologies they will develop could also reveal how different cancers interact with their environment as they develop and spread and help to diagnose patients more precisely.
This research could lead to new tests that will diagnose cancer more accurately, as well tests to determine how a patient may respond to a new treatment they have not yet received.
Researchers are also using computer algorithms to measure tumour boundaries and the make-up of cancer tissues more accurately – for example measuring the levels of key cancer proteins and predicting a tumour’s individual genetic signature, both of which can influence treatment options. In the future, images analysed by machine learning could make earlier assessments on whether treatment is working.
IPU Director Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez, Professor of Integrated Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Clinical Consultant at The Royal Marsden, said: “Digital pathology is a new frontier in cancer diagnosis and treatment and represents a chance to make a significant difference to the way we understand, diagnose and treat cancer. Our Integrated Pathology Unit is combining state-of-the-art laboratory techniques with innovative computing tools, driven by international experts in biology, pathology and computer science. We will bring this to bear on the patient pathway at one of the world’s leading cancer hospitals – and thereby open the opportunity for cancer patients to live longer and better lives.”
Image: A stained section of a cancer showing computerised data points.
