Dr. Dan Theodorescu, in the medical center’s Healing Gardens, is the director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer. (photo courtesy of Cedars-Sinai)

Cedars-Sinai Cancer and Tempus, an artificial intelligence company, are harnessing the power of big data and AI to design personalized treatment options by creating virtual replicas of cancer patients’ DNA, RNA, protein and other information to help identify the most effective approach to each individual’s disease.

By creating “molecular twins,” scientists can genetically classify cancer genes and proteins of particular tumors obtained from thousands of Cedars-Sinai cancer patients to build a database that will be mined by investigators, including those outside Cedars-Sinai. The initiative will also advance cancer care and research in underserved populations and enable investigators to analyze how ethnic and racial disparities affect tumor biology and treatment among diverse populations.

The database will integrate and store “de-identified” clinical and molecular patient information to ensure that patients and their physicians have access to individualized cancer care strategies, risk assessments, treatments and novel clinical trials. The patient information – stripped of personal details – will be available to researchers to offer insight into why some patients are resistant to certain therapies and provide data for potential cancer discoveries, including new treatments.

“Molecular twins serve as scientific stunt doubles that are always in the lab, ready to identify the best current therapies and, perhaps, reveal important details of how a cancer will affect the patient,” said Dr. Dan Theodorescu, director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer, who conceived of and leads the initiative. “We hope that in the long term, the scientific convergence of multiple biologic, physical and computational datasets on thousands of patients will enable us to develop the treatments of tomorrow as we discover the circuitry used by cancer and other abnormal cells to drive the disease. That is the dream.”

Cedars-Sinai is using Tempus’ next-generation DNA and RNA sequencing tests, which produce high-quality molecular data to identify each patient’s actionable genetic mutations and associated therapies and potential clinical trials, throughout their cancer journey. The medical center is also using Tempus’ tests to sequence a collection of specific patient populations as part of its research-based projects. Simultaneously, Tempus is integrating with the Cedars-Sinai electronic medical records system to structure its clinical data, including clinical notes, lab reports, pathology images and radiology scans, making the information easily accessible to both physicians and researchers.

Under the molecular twin project, patients will be seen in the clinic, where a physician will take multiple biological samples from tumors, other tissues and blood. Those samples and other clinical data will be analyzed by Cedars-Sinai and Tempus, which will identify markers that predict the way the disease might respond to treatment and provide the patient and physician with a comprehensive molecular report.

Based on the report, physicians will receive customized treatment information, which will include standard therapy options.