International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) Watson To Tackle Cancer With Broad Institute

Andy Parker
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International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) Watson To Tackle Cancer With Broad Institute
Attendees gather at an IBM Watson event in lower Manhattan, New York January 9, 2014. IBM said it will invest more than $1 billion to establish a new business unit for Watson, as the tech giant hopes to get more revenue from the supercomputer system that beat humans on the television quiz show "Jeopardy". The world's largest technology service provider said the IBM Watson Group will be headed by Michael Rhodin, who was previously senior vice president of IBM's software solutions group. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES - Tags: SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS) (Newscom TagID: rtrlsix221232.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has partnered with Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University to find out what causes cancer drug resistance and how the problem can be overcome. The partnership has a $50 million budget and it will examine 10,000 samples of cancer drug resistance.

IBM and Broad Institute reason that better understanding of drivers of drug resistance can lead to better treatments to tackle cancer.

Significant progress has been made in the medical community in cancer that once used to be a quick death sentence but has been reduced to something closer to a chronic disease where patients can expect to live for a while. But what has been achieved so far in relation to cancer treatment isn’t enough and IBM wants to leverage Watson to help in finding better drugs for the disease.

Cancer resistance to drugs

One of the challenges of combating cancer is that patients would respond well to a treatment for some time and later develop resistance. That not only complicates the treatment but also puts the life of the patient in danger. The resurgence of cancer has been linked to mutation of cancer cells that render previously successful drugs ineffective.

Though efforts have made to understand the causes of drug resistance in cancer treatment, little has been understood, necessitating the input of more experts. IBM believes its cognitive computing technology Watson can help solve the cancer drug resistance riddle.

With the help of Watson, researchers can examine large data volumes quickly and identify patterns that could be harnessed to develop drugs that can overcome cancer resistance.

“We can make it a much more livable chronic disease,” noted Kathy McGroddy, VP of Partnerships at IBM.

IBM and Broad hope to share their findings with the scientific community so that they can be studied further and acted upon in developing better cancer drugs.

A 5-year partnership program

The IBM-Broad partnership is expected to run for five years. The genome samples to be examined will come from Broad’s existing work and from new sources.

The partnership with Broad is the latest effort by IBM to leverage Watson in trying to solve oncology problems. In another partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering, Watson is helping physicians select the best treatment options for cancer patients.

IBM stock is up more than 16% YTD.