Massachusetts Institute of Technology

During an Oncology Policy Summit hosted by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, experts weighed in on whether medical technology is ready for its next big leap. WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—an alliance of leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education—hosted a Policy Summit exploring where artificial intelligence (AI) currently stands as a tool for improving cancer care, and where it may be going in the future. Subject matter experts, including patients and advocates, clinicians, and policymakers, weighed in on where they saw emerging success and also reasons for concern. Continue Reading "AI isn't the future of cancer care. It's already here, helping detect disease earlier, guide personalized treatment..." Post this Experts on AI and cancer care discuss whether medical technology is ready for its next big leap during an NCCN Oncology Policy Summit. Learn more at NCCN.org/summits. Travis Osterman, DO, MS, FAMIA, FASCO, Director of Cancer Clinical Informatics, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center—a member of the NCCN Digital Oncology Forum—delivered a keynote address, stating: "Because of AI, we are at an inflection point in how technology supports the delivery of care to our patients with cancer. Thoughtful regulation can help us integrate these tools into everyday practice in ways that improve care delivery and support oncology practices. The decisions we make now will determine how AI innovations serve our patients and impact clinicians for years to come." Many speakers took a cautiously optimistic tone on AI, rooted in pragmatism. "AI isn't the future of cancer care… it's already here, helping detect disease earlier, guide personalized treatment, and reduce clinical burdens," said William Walders, Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Information Officer, The Joint Commission. "To fully realize the promise of AI in oncology, we must implement thoughtful guardrails that not only build trust but actively safeguard patient safety and uphold the highest standards of care. At Joint Commission, our mission is to shape policy and guidance that ensures AI complements, never compromises, the human touch. These guardrails are essential to prevent unintended consequences and to ensure equitable, high-quality outcomes for all." Panelists noted the speed at which AI models are evolving. Some compared its potential to previous advances in care, such as the leap from paper to electronic medical records. Many expressed excitement over the possibilities it represents for improving efficiency and helping to support an overburdened oncology workforce and accelerate the pursuit of new cures. "Artificial intelligence is transforming every industry, and oncology is no exception," stated Jorge Reis-Filho, MD, PhD, FRCPath, Chief AI and Data Scientist, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca. "With the advent of multimodal foundation models and agentic AI, there are unique opportunities to propel clinical development, empowering researchers and clinicians with the ability to generate a more holistic understanding of disease biology and develop the next generation of biomarkers to guide decision making." "AI has enormous potential to optimize cancer outcomes by making clinical trials accessible to patients regardless of their location and by simplifying complex trial processes for patients and research teams alike. I am looking forward to new approaches for safe evaluation and implementation so that we can effectively and responsibly use AI to gain maximum insight from every piece of patient data and drive progress," commented Danielle Bitterman, MD, Clinical Lead for Data Science/AI, Mass General Brigham. She continued: "As AI becomes integrated into clinical practice, stronger collaborations between oncologists and computer scientists will catalyze advances and will be key to directly addressing the most urgent challenges in cancer care." Regina Barzilay, PhD, School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health, MIT, expressed her concern that adoption may not be moving quickly enough: "AI-driven diagnostics and treatment has potential to transform cancer outcomes. Unfortunately, today, these tools are not utilized enough in patient care. Guidelines could play a critical role in changing this status quo." She illustrated some specific AI technologies that she believes are ready to be implemented into patient care and asserted her wishes for keeping up with rapidly progressing technology. Some of the panel participants raised issues about the potential challenges from AI adoption, including: How to implement quality control, accreditation, and fact-checking in a way that is fair and not burdensome How to determine appropriate governmental oversight How medical and technology organizations can work together to best leverage the expertise of both How to integrate functionality across various platforms How to avoid increasing disparities and technology gaps How to account for human error and bias while maintaining the human touch "Many similar problems have been solved in different application environments," concluded Allen Rush, PhD, MS, Co-Founder and Board Chairman, Jacqueline Rush Lynch Syndrome Cancer Foundation. "This will take teaming up with non-medical industry experts to find the best tools, fine-tune them, and apply ongoing learning. We need to ask the right questions and match them with the right AI platforms to unlock new possibilities for cancer detection and treatment." The topic of AI and cancer care was also featured in a plenary session during the NCCN 2025 Annual Conference. Visit NCCN.org/conference to view that session and others via the NCCN Continuing Education Portal. Next up, on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, NCCN is hosting a Patient Advocacy Summit on addressing the unique cancer care needs of veterans and first responders. Visit NCCN.org/summits to learn more and register. About the National Comprehensive Cancer Network The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN ®) is marking 30 years as a not-for-profit alliance of leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to defining and advancing quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care and prevention so all people can live better lives. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines ®) provide transparent, evidence-based, expert consensus-driven recommendations for cancer treatment, prevention, and supportive services; they are the recognized standard for clinical direction and policy in cancer management and the most thorough and frequently-updated clinical practice guidelines available in any area of medicine. The NCCN Guidelines for Patients® provide expert cancer treatment information to inform and empower patients and caregivers, through support from the NCCN Foundation®. NCCN also advances continuing education, global initiatives, policy, and research collaboration and publication in oncology. Visit NCCN.org for more information. Media Contact: Rachel Darwin 267-622-6624 [email protected] SOURCE National Comprehensive Cancer Network WANT YOUR COMPANY'S NEWS FEATURED ON PRNEWSWIRE.COM? 440k+ Newsrooms & Influencers 9k+ Digital Media Outlets 270k+ Journalists Opted In GET STARTED

A new California startup announced itself Tuesday with $25 million in seed funding, some major scientific backers, and the hope of helping biopharma companies make better antibody-drug conjugates and other biologics. Ridge Biotechnologies says it will use in-house machine learning tools to design enzymes that can be used in a variety of drug development functions. The startup, less than two years old, is being advised by big academic names who have also helped launch many biotechs, including Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi and MIT professor Sangeeta Bhatia , who sits on Vertex’s board and is the co-founder of Satellite Bio . Bertozzi helped pioneer the bioorthogonal chemistry field and has helped form other ADC biotechs, including Firefly Bio . Ridge Bio was incubated at Sutter Hill Ventures, a more than half-century-old venture capital firm that has historically played more in tech, including as one of the original funders of Nvidia. Its investments in life sciences include the cancer testing company Grail and Integrated Biosciences , another AI drug developer. Like Integrated, Ridge is led by a young entrepreneur. Weston Kightlinger previously co-founded the manufacturing startup SwiftScale Biologics, which synthesizes proteins without cell-based growth processes. ARCH Venture Partners’ massive CDMO bet, National Resilience, bought SwiftScale in 2021. Kightlinger helped lead one of Resilience’s sites for a few years before becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill. The firm’s Palo Alto offices are “a couple hundred yards” away from Bertozzi’s post at Stanford, he told Endpoints News in an interview. At one point during his time there, Kightlinger had a running document of about 20 different company ideas, he said. That included real-time monitoring of diseases and expanding the reach of continuous glucose monitors to other areas, he said. But he came back to the cell-free protein manufacturing that had intrigued him at SwiftScale. Many biologics, such as ADCs, siRNAs and gene therapies, have undertaken “increasing molecular complexity,” Kightlinger said. He co-founded his new company with Stanford bioengineering professor Mike Jewett. Kightlinger did his PhD work at Northwestern when Jewett was a professor at the Chicago-area research university. ADCs have been around for a few decades, but gained momentum in the last several years, notably with Pfizer’s $43 billion Seagen buyout. But dealmaking has cooled in 2025. Ridge’s tools can help make “homogenous antibody-drug conjugates with very stable bonds that lessen off-target payload release,” Kightlinger said, helping avoid toxicities that come with chemotherapies involved in ADCs. “We can actually take ADCs, even off-the-shelf, approved ones, and make dual-payload systems,” Kightlinger said. The startup has a partnership with an unnamed ADC-focused biotech to help deliver the treatment’s payloads to tumor tissue without hitting healthy cells, Ridge said. The startup also claims it could apply its technology and cell-free manufacturing work to other areas, including radiopharmaceuticals, targeted nucleic acid delivery and in vivo CAR-T.

导读 “有一年夏天，我在冷泉港参加了一个暑期项目，和乔治·斯特雷辛格一起工作。乔治是噬菌体研究小组的核心成员之一，是一位非常有科学素养的科学家，虽然在领域之外并不出名，但他是一位非常出色的人，非常杰出的人。我和他一起做了一个暑期实验，那是一段非常棒的经历，他一直是我敬仰的人。” “那年夏天，也就是我大学三年级后的夏天，在冷泉港，来了几个人，以前大家都常在夏天来冷泉港，包括德尔布吕克、卢里亚、利文塔尔和噬菌体学校的所有核心人物。” 以上是刚刚离世的大卫·巴尔的摩此前采访的回忆内容。正是通过对噬菌体的了解，巴尔的摩选择了病毒学领域，并日后在这个领域做出重要发现。 “我当时觉得噬菌体研究的鼎盛时期已经结束，噬菌体对分子生物学的影响已经达到了它应有的程度，而我的职业生涯（毕竟还要5到10年才能开始我的独立研究生涯）应该另寻方向”。 巴尔的摩的成功，不仅源自于他对研究方向的选择，也与他遇到诸多优秀的导师、同行密不可分。 在他还是学术青椒时，身边就有一群出色的分子生物学，因此日后他功成名就时，也将这份优秀传承给自己的学生和身边的其他人。 如果对大卫·巴尔的摩如何对科学产生兴趣；他作为科学家的第一个十年是怎样的；逆转录酶的发现过程、诺贝尔奖以及人类基因组计划。可以参看诺奖委员会2001 年 4 月 26 日的一个采访。 我对生物学的兴趣始于高中时期，当时我在缅因州巴尔港的杰克逊纪念实验室度过了一个夏天。在那里，我第一次接触到了生物学研究，并亲眼目睹了生物学家们的工作；这段经历促使我在大学里主修生物学。 我后来进入斯沃斯莫尔学院，最初主修生物学，但后来为了完成一篇研究论文而改学化学。在斯沃斯莫尔学院的最后两年，我曾在冷泉港实验室与乔治·斯特雷辛格博士共事过一个夏天。与这位伟大的导师共事和观察的经历，让我走上了分子生物学的道路。 我开始在麻省理工学院攻读生物物理学研究生学位，但当我决定研究动物病毒时，我离开了这里，前往阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦医学院跟随菲利普·马库斯博士学习了一个暑期课程，并在冷泉港学习了当时由理查德·富兰克林博士和爱德华·西蒙博士讲授的动物病毒课程。 1959年，巴尔的摩在冷泉港学习期间，他身边是大科学家Max Delbrück 我跟随富兰克林博士在洛克菲勒研究所完成了我的论文工作，之后继续在詹姆斯·达内尔博士的指导下从事动物病毒学的博士后研究。我当时已经发现研究病毒特异性酶可以学到很多东西，因此我跟随阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦医学院的杰拉德·赫尔维茨博士学习了一段时间，向一位精通酶学的专业人士学习。 我的第一份独立工作是在加州拉霍亚的索尔克研究所，在那里我有幸与雷纳托·杜尔贝科博士共事。离开大学两年半后，我于1968年回到麻省理工学院，并一直留在那里。1974年，我加入了麻省理工学院癌症研究中心，在萨尔瓦多·卢里亚博士的指导下工作，因为我发现我的研究兴趣（之前主要涉及非致癌RNA病毒）越来越关注癌症问题。 1975年，我获得诺贝尔奖时，已经在纽约休学，研究从病毒学转向免疫学的可能性。回到麻省理工学院后，我重新调整了实验室的方向，从那时起，我就一直致力于免疫学和病毒学的融合研究。如今，我对利用逆转录病毒载体改造免疫系统产生了浓厚的兴趣。 我们在免疫学领域最重要的发现，或许是鉴定出能够重排免疫球蛋白基因的蛋白质对，即所谓的RAG蛋白。这实际上是由两名研究生David Schatz和Margie Oettinger完成的。我们转而研究调节B淋巴细胞发育的转录因子，并发现了关键的转录因子——NF-κB。 我们主要利用Abelson小鼠白血病病毒永生化的细胞研究B淋巴细胞的发育。在研究该病毒导致细胞转化和癌症的能力时，我们发现其癌蛋白是一种酪氨酸特异性蛋白激酶。这在当时是一种独特的酶活性，也是由Tony Hunter发现的。这一观察促成了格列卫（Gleevec）的研发。格列卫是最成功的抗癌药物之一，也是第一个靶向癌蛋白活性的小分子药物。 在积极开展研究项目的同时，我发现自己对科研机构的管理工作充满兴趣，至今仍保持着这两种兴趣。我初涉行政管理，源于与杰克·怀特黑德先生的邂逅。他给了我一个创办小型研究所的机会，并由他出资。我们与麻省理工学院合作，成立了怀特黑德生物医学研究所，这是一个独立的实体，主要致力于发育生物学研究。我成功吸引了一批优秀的教师，怀特黑德研究所也因此成为一所杰出的机构。其中一位教师埃里克·兰德是人类基因组测序的推动者，如今他又创立了怀特黑德研究所的分支——布罗德研究所。 1990 年，我从麻省理工学院和怀特黑德研究所来到纽约，担任我的研究生母校洛克菲勒大学的校长。由于我的一位合作者被控行为不端，影响了我的工作效率，我只在这个职位上待到了 1991 年。 1994 年，我回到了麻省理工学院，但 1997 年又被调离，担任加州理工学院 (Caltech) 的校长。过去八年来，我很荣幸也面临着管理这所伟大学府的挑战，我的妻子称其为最后的象牙塔。 学生时代，我学习的是物理科学，但作为一名生物研究科学家，我很少接触该领域的重大进展；来到加州理工学院，极大地拓宽了我对科学技术领域全面进步的欣赏。 参考资料：https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1975/baltimore/interview/ 识别微信二维码，添加生物制品圈小编，符合条件者即可加入 生物制品微信群！ 请注明：姓名+研究方向！ 版 权 声 明 本公众号所有转载文章系出于传递更多信息之目的，且明确注明来源和作者，不希望被转载的媒体或个人可与我们联系(cbplib@163.com)，我们将立即进行删除处理。所有文章仅代表作者观不本站。