2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Next generation epigenomics using artificial intelligence and robotics in ovarian cancer

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	19K09768
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 56040:Obstetrics and gynecology-related
Research Institution	Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
Principal Investigator	Komatsu Masaaki 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 革新知能統合研究センター, 副チームリーダー (70750842)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	浜本隆二国立研究開発法人国立がん研究センター, 研究所, 分野長 (80321800) 金子修三国立研究開発法人国立がん研究センター, 研究所, ユニット長 (10777006) 浅田健国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 革新知能統合研究センター, 研究員 (70773414)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
Keywords	卵巣がん / 人工知能 / ロボット技術 / マルチオミックス解析
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological cancer. To its early detection and novel therapeutic approaches toward precision medicine, it requires further investigation of molecular mechanisms underlying ovarian tumorigenesis and progression. To deal with the technical difficulties of epigenetic histone modification analyses with clinical samples, we introduced the humanoid robot that can perform complex experiments with higher accuracy and reproducibility. Furthermore, we apply artificial intelligence to systematically integrate the massive datasets including ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, and clinical records. We demonstrated that the peaks of the histone marks in ovarian tumors were significantly diminished in the promoter regions of several critical genes associated with tumorigenesis. These results suggest that our experimental platform can identify novel epigenetic signatures relevant to biomarkers and drug targets for ovarian cancer.
Free Research Field	産婦人科学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	卵巣がんの予後改善に向けた個別化・精密医療の実現を目指して、その複雑な発がん機序を解明するための新たなエピゲノム解析手法を構築した。まず煩雑なエピゲノム解析手法にロボット技術を導入して、その実験精度・再現性を高めた。さらに、人工知能技術を用いて卵巣がん臨床検体のオミックスデータを多層解析し、発がん段階における複雑なクロマチン構造変化の網羅的解析を進めた。