MSK Innovation Hub And AWS
AWS and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre Will Quicken AI-Powered Cancer Innovation
AWS and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre (MSK), a leading cancer center, announced a partnership to accelerate cancer research using HPC, AI, and other cloud technologies. It predicts 15 million cancer deaths every year by 2040. Combining MSK’s clinical and research experience with AWS’ cutting-edge cloud technology is a daring move to solve one of the most important health issues facing the globe.
Opening data to provide previously unheard-of insights in oncology
In line with MSK’s Ending Cancer for Life objective, AWS will give MSK access to cutting-edge tools and technology that will enable it to uncover insights from years of clinical research and cancer treatment. In this innovative endeavour, deidentified genetic, imaging, and clinical data will be integrated to establish a potent source for MSK’s AI-powered cancer research and customised treatment development. The objective is to create a cutting-edge, high-quality longitudinal data resource for MSK cancer research that can be used to validate and enhance cancer research in collaboration with partners.
Utilising large language models (LLMs) via Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker reduces the limitations on data quality for AI model construction; boosts data density and speed by securely fine-tuning on cohorts of de-identified patient data; and offers test cases for AI model performance to foster confidence in model results. This allows MSK researchers and providers to use calculable disease trajectories to better follow a patient’s cancer’s progression over time. This data-driven strategy, when paired with sophisticated tumour and clinical response forecasts, can assist find new insights, tailor treatments, and enhance patient care.
“AWS’s advanced cloud and AI capabilities combined with MSK’s cancer research expertise and extensive data resources from more than a century of oncology care creates a powerful engine for innovation,” said Dave Levy, vice president of worldwide public sector and healthcare and life sciences at AWS. “MSK and AWS share a vision for using technology to enhance patient care and experience, and we are thrilled about how this partnership will speed up cancer precision medicine and patient-centered discovery.”
Increasing MSK Innovation
Additionally, with AWS’s help, MSK hopes to grow its startup environment, MSK Innovation Hub, and AI-powered drug development initiatives.
- The MSK Innovation Hub, often known as “iHub,” was established in 2020 to serve as a model for collaboration between innovative enterprises and MSK inventors on digital solutions for challenging oncology problems. MSK and AWS plan to collaborate with a specialised team focused on AI innovation to grow iHub for greater effect. The team will provide specialised finance, access to AWS AI, and tech startup knowledge to enable technological pilots that enhance and validate cancer apps. Future MSK Innovation Hub Challenge cohorts will benefit from the partnership with AWS. The MSK Innovation Hub Challenge program gives companies access to MSK resources to address problems involving AI and cloud computing. From creating innovative therapies to enhancing clinical trials to enhancing the patient experience both at home and in the hospital, startups in the cancer sector will tackle a broad variety of problems.
- The AI Technology Development Fund will provide funding to help MSK researchers and doctors create high-impact AI technologies that could help cancer patients; a pilot program will begin in 2025.
- AWS is going to support MSK’s new initiative for oncology innovators and entrepreneurs by offering tools and assistance, including as cloud services, networking opportunities, and mentoring, in order to help them commercialise their products.
- AI-powered Drug Development: This partnership will also help to speed up the development of treatments for cancers with high unmet needs and orphan indications. Researchers at MSK can expedite the early phases of drug development by using the AWS Drug Discovery Workbench, which quickly screens millions of chemicals to find promising candidates. Furthermore, AWS’s high performance computing resources, like AWS ParallelCluster, are made to significantly speed up complex simulations and the processing of cryo-EM data tasks essential for comprehending molecular-level drug interactions and protein structures. A solid clinical-stage drug pipeline is the goal of this overall strategy. With this alliance, life-saving drugs could be provided to patients faster and cheaper than with standard drug development methods.
MSK Innovation Hub
The MSK Innovation Hub is an accelerator program created to promote partnerships between digital health startups and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre that are centred on cancer patient diagnosis, care, and treatment. This accelerator program, which was started in 2020 to link the institution with creative, digitally orientated health technology businesses, intends to hasten the creation of digital innovations that will improve the healthcare and quality of life for cancer patients.
From applications to innovative partnerships: Applications from larger and more established companies as well as digital health startups are welcome. MSK Innovation Hub chooses participants based on a process that finds incredibly promising healthcare projects that originate from non-competitive third parties and are in line with MSK’s strategic priorities in digital health.
By giving a few chosen projects access to a real-world oncology research and clinical care setting, along with all the associated digital, intellectual, and physical resources, MSK hopes to accelerate the innovation process. When it comes to commercialisation, industry players continue to take the lead. Financial resources are not included in MSK support.
