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2021 ASTRO-PCF Early Career Development Award to End Prostate Cancer

Artificial Intelligence Approaches for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Oligometastatic Prostate Cancer

Julian Hong, MD
University of California, San Francisco

Description:

  • Metastatic prostate cancer has been traditionally been considered incurable. Recent advances in medical imaging have led to the identification of a subtype of metastatic prostate cancer called oligometastatic prostate cancer, where the cancer has spread to only a few other areas of the body. These patients have a better chance at survival, and radiation treatments to the prostate and areas of metastatic cancer have been found to improve long-term outcomes and offer a potential cure.
  • The FDA recently approved PSMA PET imaging, which improves the detection of oligometastatic prostate, and facilitates the delivery of appropriate treatment. However, these scans are not widely available and are expensive. This can delay treatments, potentially impacting cure rates, and increase unnecessary costs to patients.
  • The need to improve the delivery of PSMA PET to facilitate its advantages in diagnosis and treatment is an opportunity to apply computational approaches, such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI uses complex data from many sources to make predictions and has revolutionized many fields outside of medicine.
  • Dr. Julian Hong is developing AI-based approaches to combine a patient’s prior history, cancer-related information, and imaging data to identify if they are a good candidate for a PSMA PET scan and if they are likely to benefit from radiation therapy.
  • If successful, this project will result in the development of AI-based tools that will improve the delivery of PSMA PET and the identification of patients at risk of oligometastatic cancer, guiding the use of the most effective treatments for those patients.

What this means to patients: PSMA PET is a new highly sensitive imaging technology that can detect prostate cancer metastasis much earlier than conventional imaging, and can aid in the detection of patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer for whom there may still be curative treatment options. Dr. Hong will develop AI-based tools that will help clinicians to identify patients at risk for development of oligometastatic prostate cancer and who would benefit from PSMA PET imaging and metastasis-directed radiation therapy.