Friday, May 11th, 2018
The Patrika
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Data science to help predict, prevent adverse drug reactions in children with cancer
C
ancer treatments can often lead to adverse drug reactions (ADRs) which not only affect the patient’s recovery but can also lead to permanent disabilities and death. For children undergoing cancer treatment, the risk of severe ADRs is even greater.
Physicians could use the technology to “ADRs in children are three-fold more asses a child’s susceptibility to ADRs likely to be life-threatening,” says Mar- ahead of time and provide personalized tin Ester, a professor in SFU’s School treatments that would prevent serious ADRs and save lives. of Computing Science. “A staggering 75 per cent of childhood cancer patients develop chronic health conditions and 42 per cent develop disabling or life-threatening ADRs from cancer treatment.”
Establishing accessible pharmacogenomic screening in Canada While the current dataset of 6,125 DNA samples are ample enough for the development phase of the project, moving forward the research team will require a larger dataset that is more representative of the population and able to ensure accurate ADR predictions. However, pharmacogenomic testing poses a challenge as it first requires both physician and patient education to support informed-decision making.
Ester is a part of a research team that was recently awarded $9.9 million through Genome Canada’s 2017 Large-Scale Applied Research Project Competition: Genomics and Precision Health. The team is led by Drs. Bruce Carleton and Colin Ross from B.C. Children’s Hospital, who are studying how patients’ responses to medication To address this need, the team is also is influenced by their genes, a field developing tools and resources to assist known as pharmacogenomics. with knowledge translation and apEster, who was named the world’s plication of their findings into clinical most influential data mining scholar practice. And as they expand pharma(AMiner) in 2016, is leading a sub- cogenomic testing across Canada to project to mine the full clinical and support their research, they hope their genomic ADR dataset using a machine efforts will help establish accessible pharmacogenomic screening in the learning approach. country. “We have collected over 6,125 DNA samples and have corresponding re- “We want to provide this much-needed ports of medication use and ADR out- access to pharmacogenomic testing in comes recorded in a clinical database,” pediatric oncology in Canada,” says says Ester. “This is the foundation that Ester. “This data will build the foundawill help us identify new connections tion for personalised medicine and for between genetic variations and ADRs, improved individual and population and develop algorithms to predict a health.” child’s likelihood of suffering an ADR • Martin Ester, Faculty of Applied Sciduring their cancer treatment.” ences, 778.782.4411; ester@cs.sfu.ca
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