I-Corps: Metabolomics and Machine Learning Platform for Diagnostics

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种简单的血液测试，可以识别癌症、慢性心肺疾病和糖尿病等疾病。为了更快地诊断这些疾病，拟议的技术使用了血液中一组特定的代谢物。当细胞因疾病而改变其功能时，代谢物也会发生变化，并可以作为一种特定的模式，即报告疾病的“指纹”。这些模式可以用质谱仪(MS)记录下来，并被人工智能(AI)识别。通过MS公正地识别专利“指纹”，并使用人工智能进行分析，可能会产生诊断。这项拟议的技术不仅可以将诊断时间从几年减少到几天，还可以为客户提供侵入性较小的测试，取代活组织检查、结肠镜检查和心脏插管等技术。这种方法不依赖于卫生保健工作者的专业资格，可以在初级保健机构、医院或紧急护理地点使用。这个i-Corps项目旨在检测癌症和慢性肺病和心脏病。最初，癌症和肺病或心脏病的发展是无症状的，因此患者不寻求专业帮助。即使在出现疲劳和疲劳等非特异性症状后，病情往往在两年多的时间内仍未被发现。迫切需要新的诊断工具，以缩短诊断时间，并在疾病的早期阶段开始治疗。众所周知，癌症、肺病和心脏病会显著改变新陈代谢状况。这项拟议的技术表明，当疾病轻微且没有明显症状时，代谢产物就会发生变化。因此，循环代谢物的图谱可以成为在疾病早期和发展阶段追踪疾病的有效工具。拟议的专利技术检测循环代谢产物的特定变化，这些变化与心脏病、结直肠癌和其他慢性肺部疾病引起的离散肺动脉高压有关。基于质谱学(MS)的平台用于鉴别诊断，以区分具有相似、非特定症状的疾病。已经开发了三个初步的代谢小组。每个小组由10到12种代谢物组成，目前的精确度超过75%-98%，可以分离特定的疾病组。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in developing a simple blood test that can recognize diseases like cancer, chronic heart and lung disorders, and diabetes. To diagnose these diseases faster, the proposed technology uses a specific panel of metabolites in the blood. Metabolites change as cells change their function because of disease and could serve as a specific pattern, "fingerprint" that reports the disease. These patterns can be recorded by mass spectrometry (MS) and recognized by artificial intelligence (AI). Unbiased identification of the patented "fingerprints" by MS and analysis using AI may produce a diagnosis. The proposed technology may not only reduce time-to-diagnosis from years to days but provide less-invasive tests for customers, replacing techniques such as biopsies, colonoscopies, and heart catheterizations. This method will not depend on the professional qualification of health care workers and can be used at primary care facilities, hospitals, or urgent care sites.This I-Corps project seeks to detect cancers and chronic lung and heart diseases. Initially, cancers and lung or heart diseases develop asymptomatically and so the patient does not seek professional help. Even after the onset of nonspecific symptoms, such as tiredness and fatigue, conditions often remain unrecognized for greater than two years. There is a significant need for novel diagnostic tools to shorten the time-to-diagnosis and initiate therapy at earlier stages of the disease. Cancers and lung and heart diseases are known to significantly alter the metabolic profile. The proposed technology shows that alterations in metabolites occur when diseases are mild and no symptoms are evident. Thus, profiling of circulating metabolites could become an efficient tool for tracing diseases at early and developed stages. The proposed patented technology detects specific changes in circulating metabolites that relate to discrete pulmonary hypertension from heart disease, colorectal cancer, and other chronic lung conditions. A mass spectrometry (MS) based platform is used for differential diagnosis to distinguish from diseases with similar, non-specific symptoms. Three preliminary metabolic panels have been developed. Each panel comprises of ten to twelve metabolites allowing separation of a specific group of diseases with current precision greater than 75-98%.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.