Just as Darwin's finches evolved in response to natural selection in order to endure, the cells that make up a cancerous tumor similarly counter selective pressures in order to survive, evolve, and spread. Tumors are, in fact, complex sets of cells with their own unique structure and ability to change. Today, artificial Intelligence and machine learning tools offer an unparalleled opportunity to illuminate the generalizable rules governing tumor progression on the genetic, epigenetic, metabolic, and microenvironmental levels. Matthew G. Jones, an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Biology, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, hopes to use computational approaches to build predictive models ' to play a game of chess with cancer, making sense of a tumor's ability to evolve and resist treatment with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. In this interview, he describes his current work. A: A very...
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