Role of AI and digital pathology for colorectal immuno-oncology

Mohsin Bilal*, Mohammed Nimir, David Snead, Graham S. Taylor, Nasir Rajpoot*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

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Abstract

Immunotherapy deals with therapeutic interventions to arrest the progression of tumours using the immune system. These include checkpoint inhibitors, T-cell manipulation, cytokines, oncolytic viruses and tumour vaccines. In this paper, we present a survey of the latest developments on immunotherapy in colorectal cancer (CRC) and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in this context. Among these, microsatellite instability (MSI) is perhaps the most popular IO biomarker globally. We first discuss the MSI status of tumours, its implications for patient management, and its relationship to immune response. In recent years, several aspiring studies have used AI to predict the MSI status of patients from digital whole-slide images (WSIs) of routine diagnostic slides. We present a survey of AI literature on the prediction of MSI and tumour mutation burden from digitised WSIs of haematoxylin and eosin-stained diagnostic slides. We discuss AI approaches in detail and elaborate their contributions, limitations and key takeaways to drive future research. We further expand this survey to other IO-related biomarkers like immune cell infiltrates and alternate data modalities like immunohistochemistry and gene expression. Finally, we underline possible future directions in immunotherapy for CRC and promise of AI to accelerate this exploration for patient benefits.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3-11
Number of pages9
JournalBritish Journal of Cancer
Volume128
Issue number1
Early online date1 Oct 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
MB, DS and NR are supported by the PathLAKE Centre of Excellence for digital pathology and artificial intelligence, which is funded by the Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine strand of the HM Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, managed and delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI, Grant ref: File Ref 104689/application number 18181).

DS reports personal fees from Royal Philips, outside the submitted work. NR reports research funding from GlaxoSmithKline. DS and NR are co-founders of Histofy Ltd. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Oncology
  • Cancer Research

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