Women’s health landscape shifting, but systemic hurdles remain - Clinical Trials Arena

LONDON, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- British researchers are bringing artificial intelligence (AI), automated laboratories and supercomputing together to accelerate the development of personalized cancer vaccines. The effort aims to test whether a more connected research process can shorten the journey from identifying a tumor target to treating a patient. The University of Oxford announced early this month that the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) was providing an additional 8 million pounds (about 10.6 million U. S. dollars) for the university's UK Cancer Vaccine AI Scientist and Supercomputing Project. The project combines AI tools for selecting vaccine targets with automated laboratory experiments and data analysis, under the guidance of oncologists. "AI gives us an extraordinary opportunity to find vaccine targets faster and learn from every experiment," said Dr Lennard Lee at Oxford's Center for Immuno-Oncology. Personalized cancer vaccines aim to direct a patient's immune system against their tumor. A central challenge is identifying tumor fragments that will trigger an effective immune response.

LONDON, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- British researchers are bringing artificial intelligence (AI), automated laboratories and supercomputing together to accelerate the development of personalized cancer vaccines. The effort aims to test whether a more connected research process can shorten the journey from identifying a tumor target to treating a patient. The University of Oxford announced early this month that the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) was providing an additional 8 million pounds (about 10.6 million U. S. dollars) for the university's UK Cancer Vaccine AI Scientist and Supercomputing Project. The project combines AI tools for selecting vaccine targets with automated laboratory experiments and data analysis, under the guidance of oncologists. "AI gives us an extraordinary opportunity to find vaccine targets faster and learn from every experiment," said Dr Lennard Lee at Oxford's Center for Immuno-Oncology. Personalized cancer vaccines aim to direct a patient's immune system against their tumor. A central challenge is identifying tumor fragments that will trigger an effective immune response.

A major new Lancet Commission has listed 17 interlinked catastrophic threats that could shape global health through 2100. Zooming out to take a bird’s eye view of the possible threats, the Commissioners have counted amongst them — pandemics, obesity, antimicrobial resistance, nuclear conflict, and artificial intelligence. Driven by the motive to move away from the intense focus on certain domains, the default mode that health care governance and activism has taken so far, the Commission took upon itself the task of freeing the world from being bogged down with single issues, though the benefits of that have been aplenty, the time had come to go beyond. Launched at the recent World Health Summit in Berlin, the report urges global leaders to stop treating these issues in isolation, and start viewing them as deeply interconnected economic, environmental, and national security challenges.

In recent decades, many countries have made meaningful progress in developing community-based mental health services. Moreover, rights-based approaches have gained traction as people with lived experience increasingly have a voice in shaping mental health policy and services. These developments have shown that people living with mental health conditions can flourish in their communities when given the right support. Yet, around the world, very large numbers of people with mental health conditions live behind closed doors in psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions. Some have been there for months; others for decades. According to the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Atlas, about half were brought in against their will, stripped of basic daily choices like what to wear or when to eat, and cut off from the outside world. We think of institutional mental health care as an outdated model. But it is far more than that. It is a human rights issue hiding in plain sight. Many countries still rely heavily on standalone psychiatric institutions.

Journalist Rick Westhead says he loves the game of hockey but it has to do a much better job at every level to protect players from sexual assault and horrific hazing behaviours. It also needs to address attitudes around misogyny and homophobia, says the award-winning senior correspondent at TSN.