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Rice statistician earns $1 million CPRIT award to advance AI-powered precision medicine for prostate cancer

2025-03-18
(Press-News.org) HOUSTON – (March 18, 2025) – Erzsébet Merényi, a statistics research professor at Rice University, and co-investigators at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Pratip Bhattacharya, professor of cancer systems imaging, and Dr. Patrick Pilié, assistant professor of genitourinary medical oncology, were awarded $1 million by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can identify lethal forms of prostate cancer earlier and improve treatment selection.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men, yet patient outcomes vary widely. Because prostate cancer growth is fueled by male hormones, particularly testosterone, the most widely used therapies today target and block the effects of these hormones. Known as androgen signaling inhibitors, the drugs are used to slow down or shrink the cancer, but over time, some cancers adapt and develop resistance. For men with castration-resistant prostate cancer, treatment options remain limited and survival rates are poor.

Changes in cellular metabolism in cancer patients can serve as biomarkers, and the use of advanced imaging techniques to detect these changes is a promising way to monitor processes associated with sensitivity to cancer therapy and even the emergence of premalignant lesions. However, the complex nature of the data poses a challenge to traditional statistical and engineering analysis methods.

The research supported by this CPRIT grant is based on three pillars:

● Revolutionary noninvasive imaging in Bhattacharya’s laboratory produces real-time in vivo temporal and spectral profiles of tumor metabolism with unprecedented detail, which enables sensitive discrimination among different aberrant states and makes it possible to map tumor heterogeneity.

● To formally capture and model such states, Merényi’s group will apply an advanced form of AI inspired by the brain’s networks that is especially adept at discovery from intricate, high-dimensional data.

● Ongoing clinical trials of systemic therapy with androgen signaling inhibitors in a diverse population of men with prostate cancer in Pilié’s laboratory (along with mouse model data from Bhattacharya) will provide uniquely rich human data on therapeutic efficacy. The clinical data will enable the interpretation of discovered variations in metabolic signatures and help identify clinically relevant biomarkers, or biological signals, that indicate which patients carry the greatest risk of developing aggressive forms of the disease early in their diagnosis.

Successful implementation of these three pillars will allow for earlier and more precise interventions tailored to each patient’s disease profile.

An exciting key aspect of the research is how AI approaches developed and applied by Merényi’s group earlier in astronomy and Earth remote sensing can now potentially help patients with prostate cancer and other cancers in the near future. This highlights the benefits of cross-fertilization across scientific approaches in a multidisciplinary collaboration.

“Using neural map-based machine learning, we can reveal hidden patterns in the high-dimensional data, including rare or subtle patterns that may be the most important, to help clinicians detect aggressive prostate cancer earlier and make more informed treatment decisions, ultimately improving patient outcomes,” Merényi said.

By developing AI-driven models capable of handling the complexity of multimodal cancer data, the CPRIT-funded project could provide a blueprint for AI use in other areas of oncology and personalized medicine.

CPRIT leads the state’s fight against cancer, having awarded more than $3.7 billion in grants to Texas institutions and organizations through its academic research, prevention and product development research programs. CPRIT has played a critical role in recruiting top-tier researchers to Texas, supporting innovative startups and delivering millions of cancer prevention services across the state.

This latest grant underscores CPRIT’s commitment to investing in groundbreaking research that has the potential to transform cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Award information:

Title: Artificial Intelligence for Early Identification of Androgen-Indifferent, Lethal Prostate Cancer and Therapy Selection

Link: https://cprit.texas.gov/grants-funded/grants/rp250090

About Rice:

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Texas, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of architecture, business, continuing studies, engineering and computing, humanities, music, natural sciences and social sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Internationally, the university maintains the Rice Global Paris Center, a hub for innovative collaboration, research and inspired teaching located in the heart of Paris. With 4,776 undergraduates and 4,104 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 7 for best-run colleges by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by the Wall Street Journal and is included on Forbes’ exclusive list of “New Ivies.”

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[Press-News.org] Rice statistician earns $1 million CPRIT award to advance AI-powered precision medicine for prostate cancer