biomarkers Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Can AI Recognize the Signs of Depression in People’s Voices?

The AHA! Team — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 05:07:05 +0000

Dr. Chinta Sidharthan via News-Medical – A machine learning tool successfully identified vocal markers of depression in over 70% of cases within 25 seconds, highlighting its potential for improving mental health screening in primary care and virtual healthcare settings. In a recent article in The Annals of Family Medicine, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of a machine learning (ML) tool for detecting vocal signs linked to severe or moderate depression. The tool successfully detected vocal markers of depression in just 25 seconds, correctly identifying cases of depression in more than 70% of samples, highlighting its utility for mental health screening. Background Depression is a major health issue, affecting about 18 million Americans annually, with nearly 30% experiencing it at some point in their lives. Despite guidelines recommending universal screening, depression screening in primary care remains very low (

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Diagnosing Cancer From Biopsies in Minutes, Not Weeks

AHA Publisher — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 07:14:51 +0000

Brian Blum via Israel21c – When Dean Bitan’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, the Israeli entrepreneur felt paralyzed. “But then my best friend told me, ‘Put your emotions aside and act like this is another project of yours,’” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Standing on the frontlines with my mother, I learned a lot about the gaps in terms of treatment. I knew we can and should do better. So that’s what I decided I was going to do.” Bitan’s mother, sadly, passed away two years ago. But the result of Bitan’s fortitude would make any Jewish mother proud. Imagene, the startup Bitan founded in 2020 with Jonathan Zalach and Shahar Porat, has developed technology that can conduct a full molecular analysis on a digitized biopsy image in real time and return a result in minutes, instead of the current situation of a few weeks. How does Imagene do it? AI, of course. Imagene’s artificial intelligence is intended to “democratize” personalized medicine, Bitan explains, by allowing oncologists to obtain an accurate diagnosis and then initiate a precisely targeted therapy plan far sooner than ever before. When Dean Bitan’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, the Israeli entrepreneur felt paralyzed. “But then my best friend told me, ‘Put your emotions aside and act like this is another project of yours,’” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Standing on the frontlines with my mother, I learned a lot about the gaps in terms of treatment. I knew we can and should do better. So that’s what I decided I was going to do.” Bitan’s mother, sadly, passed away two years ago. But the result of Bitan’s fortitude would make any Jewish mother proud. Imagene, the startup Bitan founded in 2020 with Jonathan Zalach and Shahar Porat, has developed technology that can conduct a full molecular analysis on a digitized biopsy image in real time and return a result in minutes, instead of the current situation of a few weeks. How does Imagene do it? AI, of course. Imagene’s artificial intelligence is intended to “democratize” personalized medicine, Bitan explains, by allowing oncologists to obtain an accurate diagnosis and then initiate a precisely targeted therapy plan far sooner than ever before. Oracle founder Larry Ellison led a $21.5 million Series A investment in the company earlier this year. Ellison’s involvement is not out of character — he and Dr. David Agus founded the Institute for Transformative Medicine in 2016 with a mission to drive interdisciplinary patient-centered research. Agus was so impressed by Imagene’s tech that he sits on the company’s board. Assisting Pathologists Imagene’s AI searches for biomarkers in a digitized biopsy image to assist pathologists in classifying a tumor as cancerous or not and, if so, what kind. It’s a big step up from placing a tissue slide under a microscope and examining it manually. Imagene’s software can be integrated into the pathologist’s current workflow. “We’re agnostic to their settings,” Bitan says. “We don’t want to add any effort to these physicians.” An Imagene report summarizes the findings and points out actionable biomarkers, “including those that match targeted therapies and relevant clinical trials,” Bitan says. Imagene has developed models that can check for 28 biomarkers in eight organs including the lungs, thyroid, breasts and ovaries, with more on the way. “On average, our specificity and sensitivity are more than 95%,” Bitan notes. “Today, only around 15% of patients will be diagnosed with a biomarker that can lead to a precision medicine therapy. The goal is to push the boundaries of precision medicine, to make it more accessible and available,” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Even in the US, there is a huge gap between the quality of diagnoses in an academic center and a community setting,” Bitan says. “By identifying actionable biomarkers, between 40 and 50% of lung cancer patients should be able to be diagnosed.” Agus call Imagene’s approach “theragnostics” – a combination of diagnosis and therapeutics. From All Angles The first step in Imagene’s analysis is defining what it’s looking at. “If you show me a glass, that’s the shape of the glass,” Bitan explains. “But what if I turn it? Now I’m changing the shape. AI changed the whole approach by teaching the computer by example.” Accordingly, Imagene trains its AI to recognize a mutation in a digitized biopsy image by showing it many pictures of biopsied tissue at different angles. Imagene is also addressing another cancer diagnosis challenge: It can be difficult to collect enough tissue to do a traditional microscope biopsy. This is the case with 20% of lung biopsies, Bitan says. Even worse, many lung cancer patients do not live long enough to benefit from genomic screening, which takes between 14 and 28 days. These challenges make it tough for pharmaceutical companies to identify and enroll patients in their precision medicine tests. It’s especially true for patients with rare conditions, where 26% of trials are terminated because of low accrual rates. “We can assist these companies with a super cost-efficient solution that can screen dozens of patients a day without wasting tissue,” Bitan says. Within 5 Years Imagene’s system does not yet have regulatory clearances, Bitan stresses. In anticipation of entering the US market, Imagene has set up a small office in the Philadelphia area. Bitan’s hope is that within five years, patients will be able to get a “comprehensive diagnosis at the point of care and then immediately discuss personalized treatment options or clinical trials. Just imagine what patients are dealing with when they have to wait for results to come in a month later – and that’s if precision medicine and NGS [next generation screening] is even offered in their area.” The Tel Aviv-based company, with 25 full-time staffers, has collaborated with Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel and with several medical facilities and pharmaceutical companies outside Israel whose identities are confidential. Imagene and Sheba recently published a paper in Modern Pathologydescribing the accuracy of AI models in detecting cancerous biomarkers in non-small cell lung cancer. “Imagene’s deep learning algorithms radically streamline cancer diagnosis and targeted therapy, and we are committed to continue and expand this collaboration to cover more cancer types and biomarkers,” said Prof. Iris Barshack, head of the Institute of Pathology at Sheba. Bioconvergence Bitan, a computer scientist by training, earned his undergraduate degree at age 15 and was a computer programmer during his military service. He notes that fast cancer diagnosis is more about engineering than biology. “When you need so much data to process and answer the question of whether this is cancer or not, that’s an engineering problem,” he says. “It’s about the way you collect the data and generate different insights out of it. Of course, you also need biologists and physicians in the picture, but at the end of the day, you need engineering and data science.” Israel, it turns out, has a real advantage in this kind of bioconvergence. It’s a small country where everyone knows everyone and where there is regular collaboration between universities and startups. “Add in some Israeli chutzpah – in the positive sense – and that drives many entrepreneurs to believe they can do things differently,” Bitan says. He tries never to lose sight of the ultimate end user. “Behind all the conferences and publications and numbers are real patients, and that’s too easy to forget when you’re looking at millions of slides. When we recruit new employees, the most important thing is that they have a strong desire to do good, to make a better future. That’s why we established Imagene,” he says. “When I was once asked if I had an opportunity to sit with anyone, who would it be, I said, ‘with the first patient where Imagene saved his or her life.’ This is why we do what we do.” For more information on Imagene, click here. To read the original article click here.

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High Flavanol Diet Associated With Lower Blood Pressure

AHA Publisher — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 08:00:45 +0000

University of Reading via News-Medical Net – People who consume a diet including flavanol-rich foods and drinks, including tea, apples and berries, could lead to lower blood pressure, according to the first study using objective measures of thousands of UK residents’ diet. The findings, published in Scientific Reports, studied the diet of more than 25,000 people in Norfolk, UK and compared what they ate with their blood pressure. In contrast to most other studies investigating links between nutrition and health, the researchers did not rely on study participants reporting their diet, but instead measured flavanol intake objectively using nutritional biomarkers – indicators of dietary intake, metabolism or nutritional status that are present in our blood. The difference in blood pressure between those with the lowest 10% of flavanol intake and those with the highest 10% of intake was between 2 and 4 mmHg. This is comparable to meaningful changes in blood pressure observed in those following a Mediterranean diet or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. Notably, the effect was more pronounced in participants with hypertension. Professor Gunter Kuhnle, a nutritionist at the University of Reading who led the study said: “Previous studies of large populations have always relied on self-reported data to draw conclusions, but this is the first epidemiological study of this scale to objectively investigate the association between a specific bioactive compound and health. We are delighted to see that in our study, there was also a meaningful and significant association between flavanol consumption and lower blood pressure. “What this study gives us is an objective finding about the association between flavanols – found in tea and some fruits – and blood pressure. This research confirms the results from previous dietary intervention studies and shows that the same results can be achieved with a habitual diet rich in flavanols. In the British diet, the main sources are tea, cocoa, apples and berries. “The methodology of the study is of equal importance. This is one of the largest ever studies to use nutritional biomarkers to investigate bioactive compounds. Using nutritional biomarkers to estimate intake of bioactive food compounds has long been seen as the gold standard for research, as it allows intake to be measured objectively. The development, validation and application of the biomarker was only possible because of the long-term commitment of all collaborators. In contrast to self-reported dietary data, nutritional biomarkers can address the huge variability in food composition. We can therefore confidently attribute the associations we observed to flavanol intake.” An international team from the University of Reading, Cambridge University, the University of California Davis, and Mars, Incorporated studied 25,618 participants from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) Norfolk study and found that the biggest difference was observed in participants with the highest blood pressure. This suggests if the general public increased its flavanol intake, there could be an overall reduction in cardiovascular disease incidence. This study adds key insights to a growing body of evidence supporting the benefits of dietary flavanols in health and nutrition. But, perhaps even more exciting was the opportunity to apply objective biomarkers of flavanol intake at a large scale. This enabled the team to avoid the significant limitations that come with past approaches which rely on estimating intake based on self-reported food consumption data and the shortcomings of current food composition databases.” Hagen Schroeter, Chief Science Officer, Mars Edge The study was supported with an unrestricted grant from Mars, Incorporated, and two co-authors are employees of Mars. The study worked with the EPIC Norfolk population cohort, which acknowledges funding from the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. To read the original article click here.

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New Technology Detects Breast Cancer Using Tears

AHA Publisher — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 07:00:48 +0000

Kobe University via News-Medical Net – Kobe University and System Instruments Co., Ltd. researchers have developed TearExo®; new technology to detect breast cancer using the exosomes found in tears as biomarkers. Exosomes are a subtype of extracellular vesicles. Research team members included Professor TAKEUCHI Toshifumi (Kobe University Graduate School of Engineering), Project Professor TANINO Hirokazu and Professor SASAKI Ryohei (both of Kobe University Hospital), and Mr HAMADA Kazuyuki (System Instruments Co., Ltd.). This research was mainly conducted by researchers at Kobe University’s Medical Device Fabrication Engineering Center (Director: Professor MUKAI Toshiji). It is hoped that this technology can make a great contribution towards people’s health by enabling prompt cancer detection. This research was first published online on March 10, 2020 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and was featured on the journal cover. Main Points TearExo® uses the world’s first chemical nano-processing technology to detect exosomes in a very small amount of bodily fluid, demonstrating extremely high sensitivity and smooth operability, without the need for pretreatments and detection reagents. TearExo® enables non-invasive breast cancer testing to be conducted using tear fluid samples that can be easily self-collected by the patient. The researchers demonstrated a new liquid biopsy methodology for early cancer detection using the exosomes in tear fluid as biomarkers. This was realized through an ‘automatic exosome analyzer’; a highly sensitive assay to measure exosomes, which enables bodily fluid tests to be conducted quickly and easily. Research Background Currently, imaging-based screening methods such as mammography are used to detect breast cancer. However, these medical devices are often large and it takes time to obtain the results, as at least two specialists need to interpret the images. This imposes a heavy burden on the patient. Recently liquid biopsies, where the extracellular vesicle exosomes found in patients’ bodily fluids are used as biomarkers to detect cancer, have gained attention as a possible alternative. Liquid biopsies are noninvasive and reduce the burden on the patient. It is hoped that they would improve both cancer testing rates and early cancer detection rates. It has been reported that exosomes are involved in cancer metastasis and malignant development. Therefore exosomes are often the target of liquid biopsies as they are considered to be extremely important markers for diagnosing cancer. However, it is difficult to conduct a prompt analysis using regular exosome analysis methods because they require cumbersome preprocessing. If a new, convenient and highly sensitive method for detecting cancer cell-related exosomes in bodily fluids were to be implemented, it would provide an extremely powerful cancer screening method. Research Methodology Principle TearExo® consists of a fluorescent exosome sensing chip and an automatic exosome analyzer. The fluorescent exosome sensing chip was constructed by placing an antibody and a fluorescent reporter molecule in a 100nm nanocavity formed on a glass chip. The antibody recognizes the surface proteins of exosomes and the fluorescent reporter molecule can be used to read the exosomes’ binding with the antibody based on changes in the fluorescence. With the automatic exosome analyzer, the researchers achieved a rapid, ultra-sensitive assay (about 1000 times more sensitive than current immunoassays) capable of detecting 50 exosomes in 100µL of fluid in ten minutes, without the need for the lengthy pretreatment required in the past. Detecting Cancer from Tear Fluid Tear fluid was sampled from breast cancer patients and healthy donors via Schirmer tests, whereby a small strip of filter paper is used to collect the tear fluid. TearExo® was used to measure the exosomes in these tear fluid samples and analyze the pattern of the surface proteins’ composition (principal component analysis). A clear difference was found between the samples obtained from healthy donors and those from breast cancer patients, demonstrating that tear fluid can be used to detect breast cancer. Exosome composition is different before and after mastectomy; after surgery the composition is the same as that found in healthy people. This shows that TearExo® could also be used to check and monitor patients’ post-treatment recovery, as well as for initial cancer detection.For the first time in the world, this research demonstrated that cancer can be detected using tear fluid. Further Research Exosome analysis of clinical samples will be conducted on a larger scale to determine the specificity and sensitivity of this method of breast cancer diagnosis. After that, there are plans to establish a venture company within the next year and apply to Japan’s PMDA (Pharmaceuticals and Medicals Device Agency) for the approval of TearExo® as an in vitro diagnostic device. To read the original article click here.

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