Scientists have unveiled a new platform that can identify cellular signatures of illness by studying patient cells, using artificial intelligence (AI) methods for image analysis. Researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute partnered with Google Research for the study, which involved the identification of new cellular characteristics of Parkinson’s disease through the creation and profiling of millions of skin cell images. These cells were obtained from a cohort of 91 patients and healthy individuals, who were the control group.
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that impacts an individual’s movement. The disease’s symptoms usually begin gradually, making it hard to diagnose the disorder until it reaches the advanced stage.
For their study, the researchers fed the skin cell images obtained from participant skin samples into an unbiased AI-driven analysis pipeline. This enabled the identification of features specific to cells that could be used to differentiate them from healthy controls.
The study’s senior researcher, Bjarki Johannesson, stated that the research allowed the group to distinguish between different disease subtypes as well as images of cells from healthy controls and patient cells, noting that the researchers could even forecast with moderate accuracy which patient a sample of cells was obtained from.
A research scientist at Google Research, Samuel J. Yang added that AI methods could be used to determine what patient cells had in common and allow for the discovery of new disease signatures.
Susan L. Solomon, CEO of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, stated that conventional drug discovery wasn’t as effective, especially for complex illnesses such as Parkinson’s, explaining that the facility’s robotic technology enabled researchers to find new signatures of illnesses and generate extensive amounts of data from huge patient populations.
The disease signatures for Parkinson’s identified by the researchers can be utilized as a basis for carrying out drug screening on patient cells, in order to find out which drugs can undo these features. The need for new signatures for Parkinson’s is highlighted by the high rates of failure of recently conducted clinical trials.
Daniel Paull, senior VP of discovery and platform development at the New York Stem Cell Foundation, noted that this platform was the first to identify illness features successfully and with much sensitivity and precision.
The researchers plan to apply this disease-agnostic platform to other types of cells, hopeful that it will unveil new therapeutic avenues for illnesses that have had no success in conventional drug discovery. The study’s findings were reported in “Nature Today.”
As the tools to diagnose conditions such as Parkinson’s improve, it is equally important to develop treatments that can halt or even reverse the condition in the individuals found to have the ailment. Many companies, including Silo Pharma Inc., (OTCQB: SILO) are attempting to fill this gap, and there is hope that the remedies these companies come up with will be significantly more effective than the current range of treatments.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Silo Pharma Inc. (OTCQB: SILO) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/SILO
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