NEC and Chugai use AI to enhance cancer treatment

Japanese companies NEC Corporation (TYO: 6701) and Chugai Pharmaceutical (TYO: 4519) have entered a collaboration to conduct an experiment using AI to predict drug combinations that can possibly enhance the effectiveness of certain cancer treatments.

As a result, the time required to produce predictions may potentially be reduced by approximately 50% when compared to Chugai's conventional methods, the companies claim.

Drug combination therapy, in which two or more drugs are used in combination, is a promising option in the treatment of cancer. This therapy is expected to have a higher therapeutic effect than when single agents are administered. However, the prediction of drug combinations has conventionally required time-consuming manual research and analysis of
information related to diseases, mechanisms of action (*1), and indications (*2) based on vast amounts of publications and clinical trial data.