Université PSL

Google announced it is partnering with the Institute of Women's Cancers, founded by France's cancer research and treatment center, Institut Curie, to study how AI tools can help address cancer, share science-based health information and support postdoctoral researchers with funding. The partnership, which was announced at the France AI Action Summit, combines Institut Curie’s proficiency in research and medicine with Google's advanced AI capabilities. The two entities will research how AI-based tools can help forecast the progression of cancer and the likelihood of relapse for patients, with the goal of developing more accurate and successful treatments. The researchers will focus on hard to treat women's cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive type of breast cancer that grows and spreads faster than other types. Beyond the research partnership with the Institute of Women's Cancers, the program will also fund research led by Université PSL postdoctoral fellows using AI to enhance breast cancer outcomes. In addition, the initiative will permit Université PSL and Google Research teams to share knowledge and advance broader scientific progress. “Combining our expertise in research with Google's advanced technological capabilities offers hope for significant advancements in our mission to improve our understanding and prediction of cancer's progression, and develop more effective treatments,” Anne Vincent-Salomon, director of the Institute of Women’s Cancers, said in a statement. THE LARGER TREND In 2023, Google partnered with the Mayo Clinic to research tools for radiotherapy planning during cancer treatment. The partners focused on developing a model that could automatically outline or contour around organs on CT scans, limiting their exposure to radiation. The tech giant also announced it was working with Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan to study using AI-embedded ultrasound to find early signs of breast cancer. In 2022, medtech company iCAD incorporated Google Health's mammography AI technology into its breast-imaging solutions thanks to a strategic development and commercialization agreement. The aim was for cancer detection and therapy solutions platform iCAD to utilize Google's AI breast-imaging technology in its portfolio, including its clinical decision support tool for breast cancer risk-estimation ProFound AI Risk.

The memory system alternates between periods of learning and remembering. These two functions are controlled by different neural circuits. Using an animal model, scientists recently identified a neural signal in the hippocampus, a brain region essential for forming and recalling memories, that enables the brain to alternate between remembering and learning modes. The memory system alternates between periods of learning and remembering. These two functions are controlled by different neural circuits. Using an animal model, scientists from the Institut Pasteur recently identified a neural signal in the hippocampus, a brain region essential for forming and recalling memories, that enables the brain to alternate between remembering and learning modes. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications on July 15, 2022. As we go about our lives, our brain continually remembers information that we have learnt in the past and uses it to make sense of the world in the present. However, we also often encounter objects and events that we have never experienced before, and then the brain needs to be ready to learn. These two essential functions of our brain's memory system, learning and remembering, seem to constantly compete against each other. "How the brain finds the balance between these two opposing processes is a question that has fascinated neuroscientists for a long time," explains Christoph Schmidt-Hieber, head of the Neural Circuits for Spatial Navigation and Memory Laboratory at the Institut Pasteur. Christoph Schmidt-Hieber's research group has recently tackled this problem by designing an experiment in which mice explore virtual reality environments as their brains are recorded. "We realized that the main obstacle to studying how the brain reacts to novelty was physical reality itself!" explains Ruy Gómez-Ocádiz, a PhD student in the laboratory and first author of the study. It is almost impossible to study the effect that absolute novelty has on the brain in a traditional experiment, because one would need to instantly change everything that an animal is perceiving. "We could easily overcome this problem if only we could 'teleport' a mouse to a new room as we record its brain. This might sound like science fiction, but virtual reality technology allowed us to do precisely that," continues Ruy Gómez-Ocádiz. The scientists designed a video game in which mice learn to explore a virtual 'world' and get sugar rewards when they correctly follow the rules of a simple game. While mice were engaged in playing the video game, the researchers recorded the activity of neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region that is essential for forming and recalling memories. Using this innovative approach, they discovered an electric signal in the hippocampus that appears at the precise moment when the animal is teleported to a new virtual world. The signal is emitted by granule cells and triggered by novelty. It induces a transition from a neural state of memory to a state of learning. Teaming up with physicists from the École normale supérieure, Université PSL and the CNRS, the scientists then developed a computational model suggesting how such a novelty signal may work as a switch to enable the brain to alternate between remembering and learning modes depending on the information present in the environment. "The discovery of this novelty signal in the hippocampus provides exciting new clues to understand how the brain finds the necessary equilibrium between formation of new memories and recall of familiar ones," concludes Christoph Schmidt-Hieber. The study was funded by the institutions mentioned above, the European Research Council (ERC) and the French National Research Agency (ANR).