WESTERN DIGITAL PARTNERS WITH THE UH CANCER CENTER
The latest research by John Shepherd , PhD ,
UH Cancer Center researcher and professor of epidemiology and population sciences , includes using artifical intelligence ( AI ) to study biomarker patterns in mammograms for breast cancer in women in Hawai ‘ i and the Pacific .
Maarit Tiirikainen , PhD
Western Digital has partnered with the University of Hawai ‘ i Cancer Center to provide storage platforms that are needed in order to scale and store critical research data that will help to improve the accuracy of cancer detection from mammography scans .
Statistically , Native Hawaiian women have the most cases of breast cancer compared to nearly every other ethnic group . The Hawai ‘ i Pacific Islands Mammography Registry was created as the first mammography database to focus on women in Hawai ‘ i , including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders .
Utilizing AI to detect breast cancer is essential because the human eye can only see 256 levels of shades out of a mammogram ’ s 65,000 , whereas AI can see all 65,000 shades of the mammogram and compare thousands of variables ’ relevance to cancer outcomes at the same time .
“ Because of the uniqueness of Hawai ‘ i , we have this really broad demographic of ethnicities , races , BMIs , and cultures , and if you train an AI model with that broad amount of data , it should deliver models that are useful anywhere else in the world ,” said Shepherd .
RESEARCHER STUDIES THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN GENETICS AND COVID-19 SUSCEPTIBILIY
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic , UH Cancer Center Associate Professor Maarit Tiirikainen , PhD , began working with LifeDNA to better understand why some individuals or populations are more prone to the virus than others . The study seeks to determine whether this can be explained by genetic differences . Since the project was established , Tiirikainen and collaborators have formed a hospital-based cohort of DNA samples from 34 patients to study host genetics and severe cases of COVID-19 . They have also formed a crowd-based cohort of over 400 participants using a COVID-19 symptom study application that will track any changes in symptoms , viral testing , and vaccination status . This cohort will enable the study of genetics and COVID-19 susceptibility .
This “ COVID-19 Genetic Disparity Study ” has received a $ 50,000 grant from the Hawai ‘ i Community Foundation that will be used to provide funds for genotyping and studying genetic associations . Tiirikainen is in the process of selecting 60 genetic variants to investigate , and researchers will begin genotyping in the fall of 2021 .
John Shepherd , PhD
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