Microsoft creates research teams to fight cancer

Microsoft has announced the creation of four different teams of researchers all with a common enemy: cancer.

Microsoft has created teams of scientists, engineers and programmers to use the latest in computer science to take on cancer.

“We are trying to change the way research is done on a daily basis in biology,” said Jasmin Fisher, a biologist by training who works in the programming principles and tools group in Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K., lab.

The teams have different methods of solution when it comes to cancer treatment but focus on two approaches. One approach tackles cancer based on the idea that it is an information process system, meaning computational process are used to model and reason. The other approach is data-driven; researchers can apply techniques such as machine learning to treat cancer.

The four teams are:

1.      Researchers use machine learning and natural language processing to develop the most effective and personalized treatment for each patient by going through large amounts of research data.

2.      Combining machine learning with computer vision, this team hopes to give radiologists a better look into the progression of tumors in their patients.

3.      This group of scientists creates algorithms to better understand how cancer develops and what method of treatment is best.

4.      This team is developing “moonshoot efforts” to program cells into fighting off diseases within the body, including cancer.

“We’re in a revolution with respect to cancer treatment,” said David Heckerman, senior director of the genomics group at Microsoft. “Even 10 years ago, people thought that you treat the tissue: You have brain cancer, you get brain cancer treatment. You have lung cancer, you get lung cancer treatment. Now, we know it’s just as, if not more, important to treat the genomics of the cancer, for example, which genes have gone bad in the genome.”