This image shows immune-focused disease module comparisons. Source: Nature BiotechnologyThe human immune system is complex and constantly changing. Scientists and doctors struggle to keep up with the daily new developments in studying the immune system. Because there is so much information coming in all of the time, there is a major need for a way to standardize and condense all of this information. Researchers from CytoReason have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) classification system that helps organize all this information. The system has even made some discoveries about the immune system.
The new classification system has analyzed and organized the largest group of immune cell signaling information ever. The system took 3,000 previously unlisted cellular interactions and created a library of the interactions. This is the first time that a library of immune-centric classification of diseases has been developed. The system uses machine learning to fully leverage and organize all immune-related discoveries and efforts in immunology and science.
With the system, researchers were able to standardize and contextualize full-body cell-cytokine relationships, broadening the understanding of the immune system. The researchers were also able to create 355 hypothesis for cell-cytokine interactions.
"Given the dominant role the immune system plays in disease, an immune-centric view takes us towards a better understanding of disease mechanisms," said Professor Shai Shen-Orr, PhD., chief scientist at CytoReason and director of systems immunology at the Technion, "These data demonstrate that valuable, validated predictions are possible just by mining and learning from existing papers. This ability grows exponentially when you integrate it with other prediction technologies and additional data sets."
"This important piece of work changes the paradigm in what can be predicted when you interfere with a particular receptor, molecule or cell specific to a disease or tissue. This work, combined with our Cell-Centered Model, doesn't just describe what happens between the cells, etc., but also defines who initiates and who acts on it — this is the key to the uniquely three-dimensional view of the immune system that CytoReason builds."
The paper on this new AI system was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
