This Hungarian software can ‘crack cancer’s code’

This Hungarian software can ‘crack cancer’s code’…using artificial intelligence.

Oncompass CEO Istvan Petak says the technology can find the right targeted therapy for cancer patients based on the individual molecular profile of their tumor.

To date, oncology research has identified roughly 6 million gene mutations that can cause cells to become cancers.

Doctors also have access to databases to pinpoint which drugs target specific mutations, as well as molecular diagnostic tests.

What the Oncompass tool does is combine all of that information.

It then creates a logical order of treatment options.

''But what we can show is not just simply that we can accelerate the decision, we can improve decisions significantly, which opens a new chapter in oncology. And I think in medicine we call it a digital age of medicine, the digital age of oncology."

The Oncompass software has already been used to help treat more than 10,000 patients in several European Union countries… including Katalin Bernath.

She was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer in 2012 and was told she had only three months to live.

''I told (my first oncologist) that he should talk to me about some alternative treatments or a more consoling solution. But all he said was that he could not offer anything because I must understand how dangerous tumours are and how fast they spread, and that I would end up at that hospital wearing diapers and that I would die there. Then, I said I didn’t want that and I slammed the door. I went to seek another oncologist."

Bernath’s new oncologist got in touch with Oncompass in 2013.

A biopsy of her primary tumour was found to have genetic mutations for which a specific therapy was most likely to be effective.

She responded well to the treatment and her tumours all but disappeared….and today she is still symptom-free.