SAINT LOUIS – A local doctor and her research team are using artificial intelligence to change the outcomes for children diagnosed with cancer.
Dr. Kim Johnson and PhD student Cindy Kang work at Washington University in St. Louis. They recently received a Summer Fellows Grant from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation to advance their research into pediatric cancer, the ways this cancer spreads, and how social factors affect survival rates.
“We definitely know that social factors do influence survival outcomes,” Johnson said. “Hopefully it can lead someday to less children getting diagnosed at a later-stage disease if we can start addressing these social factors, which impact the ability for a family to receive optimal cancer care.”
Johnson and Kang are interested in metastasis, the process by which cancer spreads. Metastasis is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in kids.
In their research, they have found that children from certain backgrounds tend to be diagnosed later, when the likelihood of metastasis has increased. Additionally, there are factors that contribute to metastasis.
Access to healthcare, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and health policy can all affect a child’s survival rate. Johnson noted that you can have the best treatment, but with no way to access it, survival rates decrease.
She hopes their research encourages more doctors to be aware of these outside factors. If a healthcare provider can work alongside social supports to increase access to treatment, the outcomes will likely improve.
“It’s definitely important to be aware of the family context and some of the challenges they might have, for example, like getting to appointments and sticking to their treatment schedules,” Johnson explained. “Some of these challenges might be a barrier to optimal treatment. So I think the more doctors are aware of that and can work with other systems, like social support safety systems, social workers and other systems to ensure that families are getting what they need during their child’s care to make sure that they’re getting optimal treatment, [the better].”
Kang noted that AI has been a useful way to predict these treatment outcomes. Kang and Johnson plan to publish an academic paper outlining their research, but they also want to create a public website that will allow people to use AI models to predict a patient’s risk of being diagnosed at a later cancer stage.
“For the AI part, we’re basically using machine learning models to predict factors associated with pediatric cancer, metastasis and survival,” Kang explained. “The reason that we’re using AI models instead of traditional epidemiology models is the AI models provide better prediction power, and it can also overcome a lot of the statistical assumptions that we have to overcome or we have to deal with when using traditional epidemiology methods. So that’s why we integrate AI, and also because AI is cutting-edge.”
Kang’s position will be directly supported by the Summer Fellows Grant as she works with Johnson throughout the summer to create a predictive AI model. Johnson and Kang expressed their appreciation for St. Baldrick’s and the organization’s commitment to funding childhood cancer research.
Johnson noted that this work is especially important following national changes to health policy, including cuts to Medicaid. She encourages people to support pediatric cancer research and policies that will allow more kids to access optimal treatment.
“I think a lot of people, once they hear about pediatric cancer, they really want to support research related to that, and they don’t realize how everything that’s going on with health policy affects populations like this. It’s not the first thing that’s talked about,” Johnson added. “[This grant] helps us get the work done and get it disseminated and get the word out about pediatric cancer and some of the challenges that still need to be addressed. I think [pediatric cancer] gets comparatively less attention than adult cancers, so we’re just so grateful for St. Baldrick’s support for this work.”
For more information about the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, including how to donate, visit their official website at StBaldricks.org.
