The PROMINENT team, co-led by Dr. Núria López-Bigas, an ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona, has been selected to participate in AURORA, a program exploring how artificial intelligence can assist scientists in accelerating cancer discoveries. PROMINENT, an international consortium that initially received $25 million in 2022, will now receive an additional $1.31 million to develop AI co-scientists.
The research will focus on how tumor-promoting mutations alter cells and tissues to drive cancer. AI tools will aid in analyzing scientific literature and large-scale biological datasets to identify mechanisms triggering tumor development and propose new hypotheses for experimental testing. The study will also investigate the influence of age, sex, and other biological factors on this process.
“"We can now identify the mutations that drive clonal expansions in normal tissues and that underlie cancer development, yet for most of them the mechanisms through which they promote tumorigenesis remain unknown. Systematizing this discovery is difficult because each cancer gene participates in different processes and pathways and alters the cell in different ways. By combining AI agents with our experimental research, we aim to systematically advance our understanding of these mechanisms and identify opportunities to prevent cancer before it starts."
AURORA, led by Dr. Marinka Zitnik at Harvard Medical School, is developing AI systems capable of collaborating with researchers. The $10 million AURORA program is funded by Cancer Research UK through Cancer Grand Challenges.
