Discover the two winners of the Unicancer Innovation Award for Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences

13 novembre 2020

This week’s Unicancer Innovation Award Ceremony was held at the National Convention of Cancer Centres (NCCC). For its sixth edition, Unicancer focused on a single category: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Sciences. Two projects were rewarded: LIFEx carried by Christophe NIOCHE, Research Engineer at the Inserm Institut Curie, Paris, and EPENDYMOMICS carried by Anne LAPRIE, Radiation Oncologist at the Claudius Regaud Institute, Toulouse.

The Unicancer Prize is the only prize exclusively dedicated to innovation in cancerology in France. Since its creation in 2014, it aims to encourage and publicize the work of excellence carried out in CLCCs in many fields. This year, given the health context and the strong mobilization of teams in this particular situation, the sixth edition focused on AI and Data Sciences.

“Supported by Unicancer in its proposals for hospital reform, as well as for the future ten-year cancer strategy and the new law on multi-year research programming (LPPR), artificial intelligence and data sciences also represent one of the major thrusts of our new strategic plan. This is why we wanted to illustrate this theme with a category of its own during the sixth edition of the Unicancer Innovation Award,” says Prof. Jean-Yves Blay, President of Unicancer.

Sophie Beaupère, Unicancer’s Chief Executive Officer, added:

“Indeed, this strong axis has also been concretized by the creation of an Oncology Health Data Department last summer in order to pursue an ambitious strategy in terms of health data in oncology. This new edition of the Unicancer Innovation Award highlights the projects of the Cancer Centres in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Health Data. 39 projects were received from 13 different CLCCs”.

The principles of the Award

The initiatives presented for this new edition are exclusively those that cover actions integrating new technologies, including the use of AI processes and allowing   to emerge:

New uses in data collection and processing (real-life data, therapeutic monitoring, warehousing)
New avenues of exploitation for research and improved care (e.g. remote monitoring before and after surgery, virtual reality mask to soothe the patient…).
Time savings and improved quality of care in terms of medical and nursing practice (e.g. artificial intelligence to improve contouring of organs at risk in radiotherapy, predictive analysis of side effects, etc.).

The prize-winning initiatives were selected by a pre-selection jury of CLCC professionals, then by a Grand Jury made up of institutional patient representatives and specialist journalists, as well as experts in the field of data sciences and members of Unicancer.

The winners of the Unicancer Innovation Award – 2020 edition

With five finalist projects and the theme “Unicancer, a model of innovation at the service of the patient”, the Unicancer Award once again demonstrates the ability of CLCCs to innovate in all areas of cancerology.
The two prize-winning projects were selected primarily for their innovative nature, their replicability in other CLCCs and their significant impact on medical practice in terms of benefits for patients. The 2 winning projects are :

The Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences Prize:

LIFEx, an integrated software for reproducible and transparent radiomics research
Christophe NIOCHE, Research Engineer Inserm Institut Curie, Paris

Radiomics is a recent discipline aimed at exploiting the richness of medical images. It consists of extracting a large number of characteristics relating to tumours (shape, volume, intensity and texture of the tumour signal) and their environment and studying, using data analysis and artificial intelligence techniques, the links between these characteristics and the biology of the tumour, its evolution, or the response to treatment.

The ultimate goal is to develop models using these features, measured non-invasively, to optimize patient management.

To facilitate radiomic studies, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences Award winning team has developed a user-friendly medical image analysis software, LIFEx, which is freely distributed to the scientific and medical community. The radiomic characteristics calculated with LIFEx comply with the recommendations of the international consortium “Image Biomarker Standardisation Initiative”, in which they participate.

The software has more than 3,600 users worldwide and is enriched by interactions with them. The winning project aims to extend the functionality of the LIFEx software to allow multi-centre evaluation of radiomic or AI models proposed for the management of lung cancer patients. Indeed, multi-centre validation of models is essential to consider their clinical use and continuing to distribute this software free of charge promotes reproducible and transparent research.

The “Coup de Coeur du Jury” Prize:

EPENDYMOMICS – Multiomic approach by deep learning of the radioresistance of ependymomes in children and adolescents.
Anne LAPRIE, Radiation Oncologist Radiotherapist Institut Claudius Regaud, Toulouse

Brain tumours are the most common cancer in children and adolescents. Among them, ependymoma is the second most frequently treated brain cancer with curative intent. As chemotherapy is still being evaluated, treatment combining surgery and radiotherapy is unfortunately followed by 50% relapses.

Advances in imaging, molecular biology and ballistics of radiotherapy led the winning team to propose the EPENDYMOMICS project. This is a multiomics approach aimed at detecting characteristics predictive of relapse on multimodal imaging and molecular biology. This project will gather clinical, biological, imaging and radiotherapy data from two consecutive studies that have included all children and adolescents with this disease since 2000 in France :

a national PEPPI study on 202 patients coordinated by the Claudius Regaud Institute at the IUCT Oncopole with Inserm ToNIC – Toulouse NeuroImaging Center and
a prospective European SIOP Ependymoma II trial involving 168 patients, coordinated by the Léon Bérard Centre.

These data will be validated on the cohort of 200 patients included in the European trial in the United Kingdom. The radiomic analysis will enable the optimization of radiotherapy indications and better prevention of radioresistance.

A trophy and an endowment of €12,000 (Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences Prize) and €8,000 (Jury’s Favourite Prize in the same category) respectively were awarded to the two winning projects of this edition.

The external members of the Grand Jury

Noël LUCAS, DGOS
Pr Dominique LE GULUDEC, High Authority of Health
Annie PREVOT, ANS-ASIP (Agence du numérique en santé)
Norbert IFRAH, National Cancer Institute
Sophie MARTINON, ANAP (Appui Santé et Médico-Social)
Jean-Christophe THALABARD, Ligue contre le cancer, Professor Emeritus, University of Paris
Thomas LONDON, Healthcare Data Institute
Stéphanie COMBES, Health Data
Estelle LECOINTE-ARTZNER, Info Sarcomes (patient association)
Sévérine MARTIN, Salon de K-Fighteuses (patient association)
Daniel ROSENWEG, Le Parisien (journalist)