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Medical research funding is supported by donors who made past bequests to the Foundation and spur medical advances through grants under the stewardship of our Program and Policy staff.

The Foundation’s medical funds are designated to support rigorous research across a broad spectrum of diseases, including various types of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, geriatrics and blindness. This portfolio of more than twenty funds represents Foundation donors’ long-standing support of exceptional medical research that often leads to significant public health benefits in the Pittsburgh region.

Please note that medical research funds may not be used for university/institute overhead or for tuition.  Application to medical research funds is by invitation only. Please contact Michael Yonas, DrPH, for more information.

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Next Grant Round - 1 Sept 2024

Research proposals from early career investigators that are related to health and medical topics are invited to apply.

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We’re proud to be making a difference to the Waikato’s medical research community. Join us in supporting and promoting the careers of local researchers at the forefront of life-saving discoveries.

Research saves lives

Promoting, encouraging and funding medical research from here in the Waikato region, that benefits all people, across the globe.

Projects that we’ve supported cover a range of topics, from leukaemia, to head injury therapy, to coping with disability.

We’re pleased to invite high-level applicants to submit proposals in the fields of medical and health research.

Every donation makes a difference to Waikato’s medical and health research community.

Growing medical research in the Waikato

At Waikato Medical Research Foundation (WMRF), we promote, encourage and sustain medical research in the Waikato region. Our grants are synonymous with opportunity. With every grant we give, we are driving better outcomes for medical research.

As a not-for-profit organisation, we’re committed to growing our fund to, in turn, grow research opportunities.  All funding gifts help us to increase powerful research in the local environment, empower researchers and encourage education of both researchers and the public.

Research funding

WMRF is proud to play an integral role in the future of health and medicine by granting funds to high-quality applicants. We believe the Waikato has a world-class medical research community and our grantees are at the forefront of life-changing discoveries.

Each year, local researchers are invited to submit proposals, which are then carefully considered by the WMRF Board of Trustees and Grants Committee.

Help us make a difference

By supporting the work of the Foundation, you are investing in the future health and wellbeing of our community. There are many ways in which you can become a supporter that will help us save lives now and into the future.

2024 Grant Round #2 – Opening 1 September 2024

Research proposals from early career investigators that are related to health and medical topics are invited to apply here .

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When a funding application is granted, we are collaborating with committed researchers, dedicated to making a difference in the Waikato’s medical and health communities.

WMRF is proud to announce grant recipients.

How can a rural hospital contribute to the health of its community? A study…

Outcomes following cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy for appendiceal pseudomyxoma and colorectal peritoneal…, the effects of a challenge state intervention on patient recovery when undergoing elective orthopaedic…, improving health outcomes for maaori women and babies affected by syphilis during pregnancy (wmrf…, histidine biosynthesis in pathogenic neisseria: a potential drug target for novel antibiotics (wmrf #340), awareness, knowledge and clinical treatment: gp’s perspectives relating to timely diagnosis of endometriosis (wmrf…, working alongside.

Medical Research Grants

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The Feldstein Medical Foundation (FMF) is a private foundation, created to

promote and advance medical research.

FMF Funding Priorities

Fmf is particularly focused on funding:.

• Promising junior investigators (assistant professor level) with a history of some prior funding
• New or innovative research
• Research in areas where FMF funding will have the maximum beneficial impact on health or healthcare practice for significant populations
• Research that may lead to significant advancements in scientific knowledge

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• Translation/implementation studies
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FMF is based in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, thus the

Foundation will prioritize funding in this geographic area.

Eligibility: Applications will be accepted by invitation only

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Major gift accelerates transformation of old mall into UCLA research hub

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The reincarnation of a shuttered Los Angeles retail mecca as a sprawling UCLA research center has received a major boost from billionaire philanthropist Dr. Gary Michelson and his wife, Alya, who will give $120 million to ramp up the project.

Michelson, a spine surgeon and inventor, said the money will help launch the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, which aims to create breakthrough discoveries that prevent and cure diseases including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

The institute will be a tenant in UCLA Research Park, which is under construction in the former Westside Pavilion. The indoor mall two miles south of the university at Pico and Westwood boulevards was a 1980s icon popular with shoppers and filmmakers before falling out of favor. Most of its stores closed by 2019.

The shopping center was being converted to offices when the UC Regents bought it for $700 million in January to create the research park. Along with the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, it will house the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, as well as other science and medicine programs.

By purchasing the former shopping center, UCLA saved years of toil to build such a facility on its campus, which is the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses and has very little room for growth.

“That building would have gone on the last available piece of property on the UCLA campus,” Michelson said, “and it would have been extraordinarily expensive to build there. As a real estate matter, this was just an extraordinary opportunity.”

The immunology institute had been planned for years, while a full-scale research park was something “we’ve always dreamed of having ... but we always recognized we could never find a piece of property that big close to campus. We had sort of given up on the idea many years ago — and it came alive,” said former UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, who was instrumental in the purchase of the former Westside Pavilion.

An earlier plan to build the institute on the campus called for tearing down a parking garage, digging a hole deep enough to replace the parking and erecting a new building on top, Block said.

The gift, through the Michelson Medical Research Foundation , designates $100 million to establish two research entities within the institute, each funded with $50 million; one will focus on rapid vaccine development and the other on harnessing the body’s microbiome to advance human health. The microbiome research will be conducted in collaboration with the new UCLA Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center , placing it among the largest microbiome research enterprises in the world, the foundation said.

The foundation is also funding a $20-million endowment to provide research grants to young scientists using novel processes to advance immunotherapy research, human immunology and vaccine discovery.

The institute will have labs of different sizes meant to serve biotech researchers who can start with small teams that can grow into larger labs if they find success.

“We’re going to create an entire ecosystem of biotech startups and they’re going to stay right here” and attract other players to the neighborhood, Michelson said. “We’re going to build out an entire ecosystem of biotech all through Westwood.”

He envisions 5,000 people, including 500 research scientists, working in the institute. Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated in January that it would take more than three years to fully transform the 700,000-square-foot complex, but Michelson hopes to have a large portion of the immunology institute operating in half that time, he said. At 360,000 square feet, the institute will be the research park’s primary tenant.

The former mall’s 12-screen multiplex movie theater may be converted into lecture halls or performance spaces offering programming across the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, the chancellor’s office said.

The gift is the Michelsons’ largest single donation in 30 years of philanthropy that includes $50 million to build Michelson Hall at the University of Southern California, which is home to the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. The Michelson name will not be attached to the new UCLA complex, he said, because other philanthropists — perhaps one who donates more than he did — may want the recognition.

“The gift will change countless lives here and across the globe,” UCLA interim Chancellor Darnell Hunt said.

The institute will operate as a nonprofit medical research organization funded by a public-private partnership and governed by an independent board that includes UCLA representatives, according to a UC Regents document . The institute will pay UCLA 7.5% of the net revenues generated by the sale of new medicines and other inventions its scientists create, the document said.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the project “has the potential to fundamentally change health outcomes around the world and create good jobs in Los Angeles.”

The purchase of the former Westside Pavilion marked the third major acquisition for the public university system in Los Angeles in less than two years.

Seeking to expand its footprint, UCLA announced in June 2023 that it had acquired the Art Deco-style Trust Building in downtown Los Angeles and renamed it UCLA Downtown.

Nine months prior, the school spent $80 million to buy two other major properties owned by Marymount California University, a small Catholic university that was shuttered last year. The purchase included Marymount’s 24.5-acre campus in Rancho Palos Verdes and an 11-acre residential site in nearby San Pedro.

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We’ve been helping to fund medical research for more than a century. Improving human health and changing lives is a research topic that will go on forever.

The Medical Research Foundation, established as an independent charity in 2011, evolved from the Medical Research Council's (MRC) century-long history of public support and donations. The Foundation focuses exclusively on funding vital medical research in underfunded areas, giving hope to people with overlooked health conditions.

We are proud of our history and immensely thankful for all donations, old and new, that enable us to change lives.

The MRC, founded in 1913, has a rich history of public support, with donations dating back to as early as 1919. This support was formalised with a royal charter in 1920, allowing the MRC to receive funds from both the government and the public – often through gifts left in wills. From 1968, this income was formally registered with the Charity Commission. In 2006, Dr Angela Hind was tasked with modernising these charitable funds to create a new, modern charity. This meant appointing an independent board of trustees, creating our own research award mechanisms, and legally separating from the MRC, to form the organisation we know today as the Medical Research Foundation, in 2011.

An independent and flexible charity

Angela – now our Chief Executive – leads a dedicated team which is committed to ensuring we use our donations responsibly and make the biggest possible impact on human health.

Unlike many other funding bodies, we are not restricted to providing support for a particular disease or condition, or a particular research institution. We can respond to the emerging health needs of the nation and the wider world, and the research priorities and opportunities identified by scientific experts and our donors.

Although the Foundation operates independently and can respond flexibly to the needs of the research community, we retain our unique connection with the MRC and benefit from its expertise and heritage.

Investing in the future of human health

We’re incredibly proud of the research we have funded over the years . But to improve health for everyone, much more needs to be done.

While a small number of major illnesses will remain at the very top of the research funding agenda, there are many health conditions which won’t get the attention they deserve. Millions of people, who desperately need better solutions for their health challenges, will continue to fall through the cracks.

We will use our unique position to respond to these challenges. That’s why we are aiming to invest £50 million in life-changing medical research between 2019-2029.

Read more about our plans for the future in Our Strategy to 2029

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Inspired by our story? Help us to fund life-changing research for people with overlooked health conditions now and long into the future.

We exist to advance medical research, improve human health and change people’s lives. You can help us do it.

The Medical Research Foundation is an independent charitable foundation. Formed by the Medical Research Council (MRC), we grow and nurture people and ideas wherever we see research opportunities with great potential.

Our amazing staff and trustee team work towards our mission to fund life-changing medical research to improve human health and change people’s lives.

We fund and support the most promising health research wherever we discover great opportunities in areas that are underfunded.

The Nuremberg Code isn’t just for prosecuting Nazis − its principles have shaped medical ethics to this day

Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights, Boston University

Disclosure statement

George J Annas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Boston University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

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After World War II, Nuremberg, Germany, was the site of trials of Nazi officials charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg trials were landmarks in the development of international law. But one of them has also been applied in peacetime: the “ Medical Trial ,” which has helped to shape bioethics ever since.

Twenty Nazi physicians and three administrators were tried for committing lethal and torturous human experimentation , including freezing prisoners in ice water and subjecting them to simulated high-altitude experiments. Other Nazi experiments included infecting prisoners with malaria, typhus and poisons and subjecting them to mustard gas and sterilization. These criminal experiments were conducted mostly in the concentration camps and often ended in the death of the subjects.

Lead prosecutor Telford Taylor, an American lawyer and general in the U.S. Army, argued that such deadly experiments were more accurately classified as murder and torture than anything related to the practice of medicine. A review of the evidence, including physician expert witnesses and testimony from camp survivors , led the judges to agree. The verdicts were handed down on Aug. 20, 1947.

As part of their judgment, the American judges drafted what has become known as The Nuremberg Code , which set forth key requirements for ethical treatment and medical research. The code has been widely recognized for, among other things, being the first major articulation of the doctrine of informed consent. Yet its guidelines may not be enough to protect humans against new potentially “species-endangering” research today.

10 key values

The code consists of 10 principles that the judges ruled must be followed as both a matter of medical ethics and a matter of international human rights law.

The first and most famous sentence stands out: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

In addition to voluntary and informed consent, the code also requires that subjects have a right to withdraw from an experiment at any time. The other provisions are designed to protect the health of the subjects, including that the research must be done only by a qualified investigator, follow sound science, be based on preliminary research on animals and ensure adequate health and safety protection of subjects.

The trial’s prosecutors, physicians and judges formulated the code by working together. As they did, they also set the early agenda for a new field: bioethics. The guidelines also describe a scientist-subject relationship that obligates researchers to do more than act in what they think is the best interests of subjects, but to respect the subject’s human rights and protect their welfare. These rules essentially replace the paternalistic model of the Hippocratic oath with a human rights approach.

Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been the commanding general in Europe, the U.S. Department of Defense adopted the code’s principles in 1953 – one sign of its influence. Its fundamental consent principle is also summarized in the U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , which declares that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.”

Yet some physicians tried to distance themselves from the Nuremberg Code because its source was judicial rather than medical, and because they did not want to be linked in any way to the Nazi physicians on trial at Nuremberg.

The World Medical Association, a physicians group set up after the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, formulated its own set of ethical guidelines , named the “ Helsinki Declaration .” As with Hippocrates, Helsinki permitted exceptions to informed consent, such as when the physician-researcher thought that silence was in the best medical interest of the subject.

The Nuremberg Code was written by judges to be applied in the courtroom. Helinski was written by physicians for physicians.

There have been no subsequent international trials on human experimentation since Nuremberg, even in the International Criminal Court, so the text of the Nuremberg Code remains unchanged.

New research, new procedures?

The code has been a major focus of my work on health law and bioethics , and I spoke in Nuremberg on its 50th and 75th anniversaries, at conferences sponsored by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Both events celebrated the Nuremberg Code as a human rights proclamation.

I remain a strong supporter of the Nuremberg Code and believe that following its precepts is both an ethical and a legal obligation of physician researchers. Yet the public can’t expect Nuremberg to protect it against all types of scientific research or weapons development.

Soon after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – two years before the Nuremberg trials began – it became evident that our species was capable of destroying ourselves.

Nuclear weapons are only one example. Most recently, international debate has focused on new potential pandemics, but also on “ gain-of-function” research , which sometimes adds lethality to an existing bacteria or virus to make it more dangerous. The goal is not to harm humans but rather to try to develop a protective countermeasure . The danger, of course, is that a super harmful agent “escapes” from the laboratory before such a countermeasure can be developed.

I agree with the critics who argue that at least some gain-of-function research is so dangerous to our species that it should be outlawed altogether. Innovations in artificial intelligence and climate engineering could also pose lethal dangers to all humans, not just some humans. Our next question is who gets to decide whether species-endangering research should be done, and on what basis?

I believe that species-endangering research should require multinational, democratic debate and approval. Such a mechanism would be one way to make the survival of our own endangered species more likely – and ensure we are able to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nuremberg Code.

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Donating a kidney is safer than ever, reassuring research finds

There's never been a safer time to give a kidney. 

The risk of death for people who donated a kidney has dropped by more than half in the last decade, according to a study published Wednesday. 

“It’s just becoming safer and safer for people to donate,” said Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone Health and senior author of the study. 

The overall risk of death for a kidney donor has always been low, but advances in surgery and medical care, along with more careful donor selection, have improved the odds even more. 

The kidneys play a vital role in health, responsible for filtering harmful toxins out of our blood and regulating blood pressure. As rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure — both may contribute to renal disease — have increased, the need for kidney donors has become more urgent.

Nearly 90,000 people are waiting for kidney transplants in the U.S., with the average wait time around three to five years. Kidneys are the most commonly transplanted organ, with an estimated 27,000 kidney transplants performed annually.

For the new study, published in JAMA , doctors looked at data on people who died within 90 days after a kidney transplant surgery from 1993 to 2022. Data came from both the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, a nonprofit organization that administers the nation’s only transplant network authorized by the U.S. Congress.

In total, there were 164,593 kidney donors included in the study. Thirty-six died within 90 days after donation. 

From 1993 to 2002, there 13 total deaths after the procedure for a mortality rate of 3 per 10,000 people; from 2003 to 2012, there were 18 deaths, a mortality rate of 2.9 per 10,000. 

Deaths dropped significantly from 2013 to 2022, to just five, or a mortality rate of 0.9 per 10,000. 

During this time, laparoscopic surgery — a minimally invasive technique where surgeons use small incisions and specialized instruments to remove the kidney — became the standard of care, Segev said. Previously, patients underwent open donor nephrectomy, which required a much larger incision that needed longer recovery time and more risk of complications.

In previous decades, donors who were male and people with a history of high blood pressure were more likely to die within 90 days of surgery than other donors. Most of the deaths occurred in the first seven days after surgery. The most common cause of death from the procedure was excessive bleeding, or hemorrhage.

“It’s really important for us as a community that takes care of these patients to make sure the message is consistent,” said Dr. Kassem Safa, associate medical director for the kidney transplant program at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We tell them the truth about the risks they’re taking, and this study just validates the fact that it’s a very safe surgery with a very tiny risk — but not a zero risk.”

It is critical that this procedure be as safe as possible, as many patients who donate kidneys are previously healthy with no medical problems.

“The first thing we tell donors is you don’t have to do this and you’re not going to get any medical benefits from it,” Safa said.

Fortunately, long-term data from organ donors has shown that their kidney function tends to remain stable and the risk of developing chronic kidney disease is only slightly higher than in those who do not donate , Safa said. 

Doctors are hopeful that reassuring data like this will ultimately help solve the shortage of donors in the U.S. 

“Anything that comes along that says being a living donor is getting safer and safer over time will hopefully encourage more people to step forward and donate and give the gift of life,” said Dr. John Friedewald, medical director of the kidney transplant program at Northwestern Medicine.

Friedewald, who was not involved with the study, said this updated data will ultimately help doctors better consent patients who are about to undergo the procedure. 

Tracy McKibben, chair of the board of directors at the National Kidney Foundation, donated a kidney to her mother in 2009. Her mother, who was previously a very active person and a frequent traveler, had stopped doing much of what she enjoyed as she had to frequent a dialysis center three days a week. 

That all changed when McKibben gave her the ultimate gift. 

“It was just a world of difference for her and a world of difference for me,” she said. “Being able to see her have her old life that she hadn’t had for some time when she started having to undergo dialysis.”

CORRECTION:  (Aug. 28, 2024, 1:46 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of deaths and the death rates for kidney donors. From 1993 to 2002, there were 13 deaths and a death rate of 3 per 10,000, not a death rate of 13 per 10,000. From 2003 to 2012, there were 18 total deaths for a death rate of 2.9 per 10,000, not a death rate of 18 per 10,000. For 2013 to 2022, the death rate was 0.9 per 10,000, not 0.05 per 10,000.

Akshay Syal, M.D., is a medical fellow with the NBC News Health and Medical Unit. 

2024 Courses Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research

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TCT 2024 to feature latest advances in interventional cardiovascular medicine

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The Cardiovascular Research Foundation ® (CRF ® ) is pleased to announce the late-breaking clinical trials and science to be featured at TCT ® 2024. As the annual scientific symposium of CRF ® and the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine, TCT ® 2024 will be held October 27-30 in Washington, D.C. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

For over three decades, TCT ® has been at the forefront of innovation, education, and collaboration in interventional cardiology, with a steadfast commitment to improving the survival and quality of life for patients suffering from heart and vascular disease. Every year, TCT ® features groundbreaking research that directly impacts patient care and how physicians treat heart disease. 

In the rapidly evolving field of medicine, late-breaking trials are highly anticipated and offer clinicians the opportunity to learn about new interventions, drugs, techniques, and strategies that could potentially improve patient outcomes. The 25 studies selected for presentation at TCT ® examine the safety and effectiveness of minimally invasive techniques, pharmaceuticals, technologies, and devices that demonstrate potential to treat or prevent cardiovascular disease. Late-breaking trials will be presented during the main sessions and highlighted during press conferences scheduled for Monday, October 28, Tuesday, October 29, and Wednesday, October 30.

Monday, October 28, 2024

• EARLY TAVR: Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement for Asymptomatic Severe Aortic Stenosis: Results of the EARLY TAVR Trial 
• EVOLVED: Early Intervention in Patients With Asymptomatic Severe Aortic Stenosis and Left Ventricular Myocardial Fibrosis 
• TAVR UNLOAD: Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement in Patients With Systolic Heart Failure and Moderate Aortic Stenosis
• DCB-BIF: Comparison of Noncompliant Balloon With Drug-Coated Balloon Angioplasty for Side Branch Stenosis After Provisional Stenting for Patients With True Coronary Bifurcation Lesions 
• HELP PCI: Early Administration of Heparin at First Medical Contact Versus in the Cath Lab for STEMI Patients Undergoing Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Multicenter, Randomized Trial 
• DRAMI: Randomized Comparison of Puncture Success Rate Between Distal Radial Access and Transradial Access in Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction 
• INFINITY-SWEDEHEART Complex PCI: 1-Year and Landmark 6–12 Month Clinical Outcomes Among Patients With Complex Lesion Subsets Treated with DynamX Bioadaptor Compared to a Contemporary Drug Eluting Stent 
• CONFIRM-2: Artificial Intelligence Enabled Quantitative CT Assessment of Atherosclerosis and Major Adverse Events: A Multi-Center International Registry

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Cardiovascular Research Foundation

Posted in: Drug Trial News | Medical Condition News

Tags: Angiography , Angioplasty , Aortic Stenosis , Artificial Intelligence , Atherosclerosis , Balloon Angioplasty , Cardiology , Cardiovascular Disease , Catheter , Colchicine , CT , Drugs , Education , Embolism , Endocarditis , Fibrosis , Healthcare , Heart , Heart Disease , Heart Failure , Heparin , Interventional Cardiology , Medicine , Mitral Regurgitation , Myocardial Infarction , Optical Coherence Tomography , Paclitaxel , Pharmaceuticals , Placebo , Pulmonary Embolism , Rapamycin , Research , Sirolimus , Stenosis , Stent , Surgery , Therapeutics , Tomography , Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement , Vascular

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Artificial intelligence for clinical pathology, data-efficient foundation model for biomarker detection.

Research News / September 02, 2024

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shows promise in medicine, where they can be used to detect diseases earlier, improve treatments, and ease staff workloads. But their performance depends on how well the AI is trained. A new multi-task approach to training AI makes it possible to train foundation models quicker and more cost-effectively, with less data. Researchers are turning to this approach to compensate for the shortage of data in medical imaging — and ultimately save lives.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there has been a significant increase in cases of cancer worldwide. Clear indicators, known as biomarkers, are key to reliable diagnosis and successful treatment. AI systems can help identify these kinds of measurable parameters in pathological images. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS teamed up with RWTH Aachen University, the University of Regensburg, and Hannover Medical School to develop a foundation model for this. The resource-efficient model analyzes tissue samples quickly and reliably, based on just a fraction of the usual training data.

Moving away from large volumes of data and self-supervised learning

Standard foundation models, like the large language models used for ChatGPT, are trained using large and diverse data sets, supervising themselves as they learn. But for medical image analysis, data is generally scarce, and in fact, the small amounts of data available in clinical studies pose a major challenge for the use of AI. In addition, clinical centers differ in how they process pathological preparations and in their patient populations — even before the specific form and characteristics of diseases are considered.

All of these factors make it harder to reliably detect existing patterns, and thus diagnostically relevant characteristics. To train AI effectively, this means large volumes of training images from different origins are typically needed. But each cross-sectional image of tissue is typically several gigabytes in size, containing thousands of different cells but only reflecting a tiny fraction of the variability present.

Specialization follows solid foundational training

Fraunhofer MEVIS has devised a solution based on supervised pre-training. “We’re developing a training strategy for foundational AI modeled on the training that pathologists undergo. They don’t have to relearn what a nucleus is all over again in each case. That’s textbook knowledge. Once these concepts have been covered, they’re present as a foundation and can be applied to various diseases,” explains Dr. Johannes Lotz, an expert from Fraunhofer MEVIS.

In much the same way, their AI model undergoes foundational training, learning general characteristics and laws known as tissue concepts from a broad collection of tissue section images created with various tasks. Combining these tasks gives rise to the large volumes of data needed to train a robust large AI model. The learned tissue concepts are then applied to a specific task in a second step. In this way, the algorithms can identify biomarkers distinguishing different types of tumors, for example — all with much less data.

“In our solution, every data set has been annotated by a specially trained human with the information that needs to be learned,” explains Jan Raphael Schäfer, an AI expert at Fraunhofer MEVIS who works in Lotz’s team. “We give our model the image and provide the answer at the same time. And we do it for numerous different tasks simultaneously, using a multi-task approach.”

The team also uses an image registration method developed at the institute: HistokatFusion. This method makes it possible to generate automatically annotated training data from tissue studies such as immunohistochemical staining, thereby using marked antibodies to visualize proteins or other structures. To do this, this method combines information from multiple histopathological images. The experts incorporate these automatically generated annotations into the training of their model, which accelerates data collection.

Outstanding results with just six percent of the resources

Compared to models that do not involve supervised training, the Fraunhofer researchers’ approach achieves similar results with only six percent of the training data. “Since the amount of training data in deep learning correlates with training effort and processing power, we found that we needed about six percent of the resources typically required. Furthermore, we only need about 160 hours of training, which is a crucial cost factor. This means we can train an equivalent model with much less effort,” Lotz explains.

The Fraunhofer experts’ participation in the international SemiCOL (Semi-supervised learning for colorectal cancer detection) competition for cancer classification and segmentation showed how well these pre-trained models can be generalized. The team won the classification part of the challenge without having to undertake expensive adjustments to their model and ultimately came in second out of nine participating teams.

Tests of interactive image segmentation, in which tissue structures are automatically detected and measured in an image, also show that this method has great potential. The model needs only a few sample image sections to extend concepts that it has already learned. But that isn’t all. “Models based on our solution make it possible to develop new interactive medical AI training tools that let specialists interact directly with AI solutions and train relevant models quickly, even without any technical background knowledge,” says Schäfer.

Freely accessible and transferable

The researchers publish the pre-trained model and the code for further learning on various platforms. This lets specialists use it for non-commercial purposes, developing their own solutions. The team is also working with clinical partners to have the solution approved for medical applications and to systematically validate it. The experts at Fraunhofer MEVIS are certain that once in day-to-day clinical practice, systems involving their foundation model will reduce workloads in pathology and improve the success of treatment.

• Research News September 2024 - Data-Efficient Foundation Model for Biomarker Detection [ PDF  0.11 MB ]
• Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS  (mevis.fraunhofer.de)
• HistoKatFusion  (histoapp.pages.fraunhofer.de)

Li Ka Shing Foundation funds non-invasive liver cancer treatment for Hong Kong patients

Li ka shing foundation donates asia’s first cutting-edge, non-invasive device for treatment of liver cancer to city’s oldest university.

The non-invasive ultrasound treatment will be offered to 20 hospital patients free of charge over the next two years as part of a research programme led by the university.

The first patient is expected to start treatment this week.