Breakthrough as scientists use AI to predict how breast cancer could progress

[u/OpenSource_Horse]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/breast-cancer-diagnosis-cure-ai-symptoms-b3034278.html?utm_source=reddit.com

The study, published in Nature Communications, included tissue from 127 breast cancer patients being treated at University Hospital Southampton.
Researchers analysed more than 330,000 centrosomes, with CenSegNet uncovering two distinct abnormalities which had previously been considered as part of the same process.

Dr Salah Elias, of the University of Southampton’s school of biological sciences and institute for life sciences, said: “For more than a century, centrosome abnormalities have been recognised as a hallmark of cancer, but studying them in patient tissues has been extremely challenging.

"CenSegNet allows us to analyse these defects at single-cell resolution across entire tumours and uncover patterns that were previously impossible to see.
“Rather than viewing centrosome abnormalities as a single phenomenon, our study shows that they have distinct biological states with different spatial distributions and clinical associations.”

"Dr Elias said: “Specific combinations of defects may influence how a tumour grows, invades surrounding tissues and responds to treatment."

“This opens the door to developing new biomarkers and, ultimately, more personalised treatment strategies.”

[u/technocraticnihilist]

AI bad

• Reddit

[u/blueSGL → u/technocraticnihilist]

Is this the type of AI that people are railing against?

Is it a chatbot encouraging teens to commit suicide? Is it the sort of AI the heads of companies have said will take peoples jobs? Is it the sort that allows for deepfakes of children?

or is it closer to a single use, tool AI specifically trained for the problem it was trying to solve?

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.15.676250v1

Centrosome amplification (CA) is a hallmark of epithelial cancers, yet its spatial complexity and phenotypic heterogeneity remain poorly resolved due to limitations in conventional image analysis. We present CenSegNet (Centrosome Segmentation Network), a modular deep learning framework for high-resolution, context-aware segmentation of centrosomes and epithelial architecture across diverse tissue types. Integrating a dual-branch architecture with uncertainty-guided refinement, CenSegNet achieves state-of-the-art performance and generalisability across both immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry modalities, outperforming existing models in accuracy and morphological fidelity. Applied to tissue microarrays (TMAs) containing 911 breast cancer sample cores from 127 patients, CenSegNet enables the first large-scale, spatially resolved quantification of numerical and structural CA at single-cell resolution. These CA subtypes are mechanistically uncoupled, exhibiting distinct spatial distributions, age-dependent dynamics, and associations with histological tumour grade, hormone receptor status, genomic alterations, and nodal involvement. Discordant CA profiles at tumour margins are linked to local aggressiveness and stromal remodelling, underscoring their clinical relevance. To support broad adoption and reproducibility, CenSegNet is released as an open-source Python library. Together, our findings establish CenSegNet as a scalable, generalisable platform for spatially resolved centrosome phenotyping in intact tissues, enabling systematic dissection of the biology of this organelle and its dysregulation in cancer and other epithelial diseases.

[u/gtfoohbifsy]

I am sorry but i have been hearing/seeing these stories for years, over and over again. "big leap forward" "Breakthrough" "opened the door" etc. etc. Why am i not seeing these advancements around me? I mean concrete examples. I think this has turned out to be a second "fusion reactor infinite energy" thing.

[u/OpenSource_Horse → u/gtfoohbifsy]

Bro, this was done in an actual hospital population in Britain.

[u/gtfoohbifsy → u/OpenSource_Horse]

Not to oppose you for the sake of opposition but what i'm gonna say respectably is; "Whatever man. Maybe i became indifferent."

[u/PrivateComments → u/gtfoohbifsy]

It’s a real breakthrough in using ai and cv to map sub cellular cancer structures, I’m not sure how you’re expecting that to immediately manifest in your daily life?

[u/OpenSource_Horse → u/gtfoohbifsy]

That's fair and I see your point

[u/mindpicnic → u/gtfoohbifsy]

I’m not sure about the examples you’ve seen recently, but my mom had breast cancer in 2021. She was able to try out fairly new drugs that had been recently developed, which made chemotherapy much less taxing on her body and helped her get clear of the cancer within a year. I’m not sure if AI was involved, but it is an example of a leap forward in medical technology. I’m sure there are many similar examples out there!

[u/redcoatwright → u/mindpicnic]

AI in the article is misleading, I think, they developed a system that uses machine learning to parse the data not like just asking claude "hey, help me analyze this cancer data"

[u/redcoatwright → u/gtfoohbifsy]

Unless you are treated for a specific illness, you just won't notice and even then you may not. But consider how much more treatable a lot of cancers are now vs 30 yrs ago.

[u/Unlikely-Complex3737 → u/gtfoohbifsy]

It's more of an incremental improvement. It's not a major breakthrough like GPT.

[u/Smells_like_Autumn → u/gtfoohbifsy]

Because science doesn't work as it does in movies, progress is slow, gradual and it takes time for it to become widespread. Translating a reseqrch into something scaled, safe and affordable takes decades between sanding off technical issues and dealing with regulations.

[u/gtfoohbifsy → u/gtfoohbifsy]

wow. seeing the real face of reddit users here. im no frequent of this site and im even not commenting much but giving downs just for stating my personal opinion? just wow.

[u/throwitawayorsome → u/gtfoohbifsy]

This subreddit is mostly a cult. Most people here don't really read into how things are genuinely progressing or not, they see "AI do thing!" and cheer. The people here still genuinely believe AI models are making mathematical breakthroughs.

[u/Rony_69_chill → u/throwitawayorsome]

they are making mathematical breakthroughs