this video is brought to you by ground news Dr Malik Marshall is here with us now doctor we could soon diagnose cancer with a single drop of blood now can you believe that these are scientist in China that created a test using artificial intelligence that can detect cancer using one spot of dried blood hi welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion we all remember Elizabeth Holmes and Theos it was one of the most high-profile fraud cases in recent memory her original idea was simple from just a pin PRI of blood patients could get a diagnosis of a range of diseases and when you think about it it was a pretty good idea the only problem was it was imposs Holmes with her delusions of grandeur thought that she could be the next Steve Jobs and change the world the end result was investors that were scammed out of tens of billions and the health of innocent patients put at risk but what if she was just a little ahead of her time what if thanks to the advancements of AI The Impossible Is Now possible multiple Studies have shown very promising signs the detection of cancer all from a drop of blood in this episode we'll see how advancements and blood testing as well as AI may change the fight against cancer forever you are watching T Fusion [Music] TV cancer is a terrible thing it rips families apart and ravages the bodies of those suffering it's been causing destruction since its earliest documentation in ancient Egypt yes fossilized bone tumors have been found from 5,000 years ago and you'd think after all of this time we'd have figured out something by now but the hard truth is this cancer is so relentless because it's complex comprising of over 200 distinct diseases each with its subtypes that vary in behavior and genetics for this reason despite technological advancements Innovation and Relentless research cancer rates are still on the rise by 2050 there will be an estimated 35 million new cancer cases and that's a 77% increase from the 20 million estimated cases in 2022 in a few short years for the first time in history cancer is on track to be Humanity's number one killer but are we just seeing more cancer cases because our diagnosis tools have gotten better it's possible but recent Trends are screaming something else cancer has always been thought of as a disease of the old but what if I told you that that's changing early onset cancers have increased by 79% for those under 50 so something else is going on is it obesity ultra-processed diets stress even toxic forever chemicals like pasas have been blamed and then there's the very strange phenomenon of specifically Asian non-smoking women ending up with lung cancer at 150 to 200% of the rate of other communities this afternoon we want to shed light on a condition impacting more and more Asian-American women and it remains a mystery as to why and now a Bay Area based study finds that 80% 80% of Asian-American women with lung cancer never smoked they're also one and a half to two times more likely to be diagnosed than any other racial group scientists really don't have an answer for any of it but there's hope so let's take a look at that where you live can determine your odds of survival the best thing to do for cancer is to detected early as that dramatically increases our chances of survival but there's a problem there are currently no reliable or Standalone blood tests that can diagnose deadly diseases such as pancreatic gastric and choral cancer and this is why the lack of approved biomarkers biomarkers are biological molecules within the body that tells doctors if everything's functioning well or not instead doctors have to rely on Imaging or surgical procedures each Limited in their own way but what if there was a way to detect it extremely early even before symptoms what if it could be done in such a way that it's cheap and affordable and within the reach of worldwide communities that sounds insane but we're actually on the verge of it happening today in the past few months and years there's been a silent Revolution going on with AI blood testing and cancer this new research paper says that there could be in fact a way to detect pancreatic gastric or chexal cancer and get the diagnosis right 82 2% to 100% of the time they've come up with a method to detect the world's deadliest cancers with staggering accuracy so how did they achieve such remarkable accuracy to fully answer that question we first need to take a step back and understand some background here and it all starts with metabolites modern cancer research focuses on the discovery of biomarkers but recently scientists have zeroed in on a new one metabolites without getting to into the Weeds on this here's the tldr version otherwise this video could be hours long think of it like this our genetic makeup combined with the proteins in our body give insights into our normal physiological state or an abnormal pathological state are things in the body going well or poorly metabolites can offer insights into cancer progression and scientists have found this measure to be probably the best biomarker for cancer but how does it work imagine your body is a petrol car that's running the exhaust smoke is the metabolite and imagine that there's a sensor that measures the composition of the exhaust smoke the sensor is the AI in our example if the engine isn't quite right then there can be some telltale signs such as changes in the composition of the exhaust Smoke by using the sensor in this crude example how do we interpret the data and tell exactly what's wrong with the car just by the sample of exhaust smoke you'd have to build a system that can associate slight variations in Smoke composition with a particular engine problem well this is where the AI comes in in this example the AI is the sensor which is reading the exhaust smoke which are the biomarkers and in the world of cancer research recently using artificial intelligence like this is becoming more common but the thing is targeting metabolites aren't new it dates back to 1947 and the work of Dr Sydney Farber known as the father of modern chemotherapy however really getting to the bottom of cancer cell metabolism has always been impeded by the technological capabilities it was almost impossible to actually handle and analyze the chemical complexity of all those metabolites and their patterns it's just way too hard to do by hand or by most hard-coded [Music] programs with that background being understood now we can get into the study in the study scientists used a special kind of mass spectrometry they used this along with machine learning to analyze metabolic changes from dried blood spots the system was able to analyze complex metabolic data with accuracy in previous studies artificial intelligence was found to be almost twice as accurate in assessing the aggressiveness of certain kinds of cancer so this is AI in action what do we see here AI circled this area in red and said this area has a dangerous pattern it looks like cancer might come up 2 years later there's a cancer right in that same spot where the AI predicted it would be and right there is the Crux of it AI can recognize patterns that humans can't see and extract useful information from it it's pretty ironic when you look at all the AI scams going on there are good sides too and plus in this case the more samples the AI processes the more accurate the predictions and there's more good news this method is less cumbersome and also cheap this new non-invasive test would theoretically require just 0.05 mL of blood now if this sounds familiar it's because we've heard similar promises before so what's different this time dried blood for starters dried blood can be analyzed right away they remain stable across a range of temperatures and are cheaper to transport they found the blood spot test had greater accuracy than current tests youing using whole blood in fact the spot test was more heat stable it was less expensive faster to perform took up less physical space and was easier to transport making the test particularly accessible to underserved populations and less developed countries where cancer are often missed but it sounds remarkable and so much less expensive than all these other diagnostic tests that people are going through right now incredible Okay the reason you're only hearing about this now is because previously common cancer biomarkers such as micrornas and proteins couldn't handle the drying process and this is because it messed up the test accuracy but when scientists shifted their focus to metabolic biomarkers they discovered that metabolites stayed stable during transportation and temperature changes and they still provided highly accurate Diagnostics we're still missing the mark on a diagnostic Solution that's accessible to all only 5% of global cancer spending reaches the countries where 80% of the cancer cases are and less than 30% of poorer income countries have the diagnostic tools they need most cancer detection methods are costly and require specialized staff but even in countries with access to such methods there are significant drawbacks pet scans can Overlook small tumors and also interpretations can vary from Doctor to doctor biopsies are of course invasive and hard to come by globally regular blood tests lead to many false positives and endoscopies come with their own side effects so with this new Innovative Fusion of dried blood serum metabolite biomarkers and artificial intelligence you can see why heads are turning and ears are perking up and this will be especially beneficial for underserved areas with limited resources incredibly this is not the first time AI has been used in this exact way back in 2022 researchers at John Hopkins kiml Cancer Center found that AI could detect more than 80% of liver cancers however in this study of 724 people a different biomarker was used DNA fragments you see when cancer cells die they release DNA fragments into the bloodstream this is known as cell-free DNA or CF DNA CF DNA can come from both healthy and cancerous cells but cancerous cells exhibit irregular patterns of fragmentation so the researchers used machine learning to examine millions of of these fragments and then amazingly they could identify the subtle patterns associated with cancer awesome stuff another recent breakthrough has been achieved by UK scientists their work theoretically makes it possible to detect cancer 7 years before traditional diagnosis but it's also interesting to see how the news is covered and that's where today's sponsor ground news comes in ground news is a website developed by a former NASA engineer she was on a mission to give readers an easy datadriven objective way to read the news using this cancer story as an example we can see that 26 news outlets covered around the world their biased distribution chart shows me the political leanings of those news outlets and I can get a summary of how the issue was being framed the left tended to use heavier language like warning signs and deadly while the riot didn't have such language in this case for more politically charged stories ground news is extremely helpful to get a full picture of the different perspectives scrolling down I can compare every single article on the topic with convenient tags showing me cont text about the source like how factual it is and who owns it ground news is a fantastic tool for getting International views sifting through misinformation and identifying media bias they provide all the tools you need to be a critical thinker today we're offering 40% off Advantage subscription this comes with a new feature called my news bias so you can even check how your news viewing habits change over time one of my favorite features is the blind spot feed this shows you stories that are underreported by one side of the political Spectrum for example if you lean left you probably miss the story about the largest number of people crossing the English Channel in a day this year go to grounds.com coldfusion to get started thanks okay now back to the video so while this is all very encouraging we have to take a look at the whole picture we're still realistically a few years away from these AI powered techniques being put to work to up those diagnosis rates major clinical trials require a lot of money a lot of trial patients and a lot of regulatory Cycles I still think it's clear that there's New Hope in the fight against cancer it's a multi-pronged approach that combines new cancer Discovery utility practicality and the most powerful new technology thinking about it with AI bolted onto the side of human Ingenuity we could see a new error in the medical field now everyone could have access to a cheap and easy method to detect cancer just walk into your local doctor's office take a pin prick of blood and get your results the algorithms will only get better and ultimately millions of lives could be saved with early detection how cool would that be so at this point I think it's fairly normal to have mixed feelings about AI on the one hand it's overplayed overhyped there's fraud lying and employment theft in some sectors but on the other hand it can do some amazing things basically anything that involves patent recognition and prediction through data can be enhanced through Ai and that's a lot of stuff you just have to think outside the box sometimes times all in all I don't think anyone can be mad at this application it's very interesting isn't it anyway thanks for watching my name is toogo and you've been watching cold fusion and I'll catch you again soon for the next episode cheers guys have a good [Music] one cold fusion it's me thinking [Music] you something to me something