Computer that can read promises cancer breakthroughs

A computer system that can read scientific papers in a similar way to humans promises breakthroughs in cancer research, according to Cambridge scientists. 

 

Use of the pill in the population as a whole was significantly associated with both the number of new cases of, and deaths from, prostate cancer in individual countries around the world, the analysis showed

 

Called CRAB, the system is able to trawl through millions of peer-reviewed articles for clues to the causes of tumours. Already, it has uncovered a potential reason why some chemicals induce pancreatic cancer only in men.

CRAB is the latest implementation of a rapidly-emerging form of artificial intelligence called natural language processing, which is also used in the Siri personal assistant software in the iPhone 4S. It allows computers to read texts and derive meaning from them, despite their complexity and abiguities, as humans do.

The system will first be used to assess the risk that new chemicals could cause cancer.

“The first stage of any risk assessment is a literature review. It’s a major bottleneck," said Dr Anna Korhonen of the University of Cambridge, who led the development of CRAB.

"There could be tens of thousands of articles for a single chemical. Performed manually, it’s expensive and, because of the rising number of publications, it’s becoming too challenging to manage," she said.

Emerging economies including China and India are producing scientific research at an unprecedented rate, prompting fears that important discoveries could be neglected my human readers.


"Although still under development, the system can be used to make connections that would be difficult to find, even if it had been possible to read all the documents," said Dr Korhonen.


CRAB is to be made available to researchers online via a web interface. It is hoped the technology can be adapted to other fields of science.