Hello Readers!
In today’s blog we will be learning about the AI Tool NBDriver (neighbourhood driver) developed by researchers of IIT-Madras. We will be discussing in detail what this AI tool is, its importance and other key facts about it. So read till the end if you want to know all about this topic.
Background
Cancer is caused due to the uncontrolled growth of somatic mutations. However, not all somatic mutations are responsible for developing the disease.
There are a small fraction of somatic variants known as “driver mutations”. These mutations enable cancer cells to grow. Apart from this there are a large number of “passenger mutations”. These mutations do not have any effect on cancer development. The research has overcome this challenge of differentiating between a small number of driver mutations that boost the growth of cancer cells from the non-harmful passenger mutation.
AI Tool NBDriver
NBDriver (Neighbourhood Driver) is a tool used to differentiate between driver and passenger mutations. This AI algorithm will spot cancer-causing changes in cells. Its performance has been tested on several open-source cancer mutation datasets. The model could differentiate between the two mutations from cancer genes with an accuracy of 89%. Also when the predictions from NBDriver and other three commonly used driver prediction algorithms were combined it resulted in an accuracy of 95%.
NBDriver can accurately identify 85% of rare driver mutations from patients with Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM). It is a type of cancer affecting the brain or spine.
Importance of this research
This algorithm will impact cancer treatment. Detecting driver mutations is a difficult task. But with the development of this method it will help in detecting driver mutations. This will accelerate early diagnosis and the development of personalised therapies.
Researchers
Professor B.Ravindran, Head, RBCDSAI (Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI) and Mindtree Faculty Fellow IIT Madras
Dr. Karthik Raman, Faculty Member of RBCDSAI and the coordinator of Centre for Integrative Biology and Systems Medicine (IBSE)
Mr. Shayantan Banerjee, a Master’s Student at IIT Madras
NBDriver has been made available publicly. It can be used to obtain predictions on any user-defined set of mutations. In simple words, one will be able to predict the class of new mutation – driver or passenger.
With this we come to the end of this blog. To summarise we discussed what this new AI tool is all about and how it is going to help in detecting cancer mutations. Hope with this blog you have a clear understanding of the topic.
Stay tuned with Hraker.com for more such blogs.
 developed by researchers of IIT-Madras. We will be discussing in detail what this AI tool is, its importance and other key facts about it. So read till the end if you want to know all about this topic.){kind=link}