Olivia Newton-John cancer legacy lives on with AI

The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute in Melbourne has partnered with a tech heavyweight to overhaul the ‘plumbing’ across its vast data network to identify more effective treatments for patients.

Olivia Newton-John at the cancer research institute that bears her name in Melbourne before her death in 2022. Picture: Nicole Cleary

Olivia Newton-John died months before artificial intelligence exploded onto the mainstream, but the cancer research institute that bears her name is now harnessing the technology to help combat the disease and potentially find a cure.

The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute in Melbourne has partnered with tech behemoth Hewlett Packard Enterprise to overhaul the “plumbing” across its vast data network to identify more effective treatments for patients.

Christine De Nardo, the institute’s chief operating officer, said the partnership would be able to accelerate research, even creating digital twins of tumours to better predict patient outcomes.

Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute chief operating officer Christine De Nardo.

“The long-term goal is ultimately to cure cancer. But that isn’t the only problem our patients face,” Dr De Nardo said.

“We work very much on a bedside to (lab) bench to bedside model, so taking the needs of our patients and clinicians and being able to answer those critical questions with the research that we do.

“So on that journey to curing cancer our focus very much is about creating treatments that are more effective, that are more tolerable and that are more accessible to the cancer community.”

Olivia Newton-John at the opening of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute at the Austin Hospital at Heidelberg in 2015. Picture: Nathan Dyer

The scientific term is patient stratification – finding the right treatment for the right patient. Australia’s biggest health company CSL has also been using AI to accelerate drug development and develop more personalised and effective drugs for a range of serious diseases.

The key is data. Drug development – which can take up to 20 years – focuses on analysing copious amounts of information. AI can do that in a heartbeat, saving researchers valuable time as they develop lifesaving treatments.

“Over the years, we’ve collected mammoth amounts of historical data, which is essentially patient sample data, and we’re continuing to do that, but in order to be able to really interrogate these rich data sets and analyse them efficiently we needed this hybrid solution that HPE (Hewlett Packard) has been able to provide,” Dr De Nardo said.

“Being able to analyse this on an unprecedented scale is phenomenal. And in our case this will give us the power to work – for example – with digital twins, to be able to model tumour types and predict responses to treatment.”

Olivia Newton-John’s father and sister Rona died from cancer, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 when she was in her forties. Her cancer returned in 2013, and she died in August 2022 – months before the launch of ChatGPT ignited the AI revolution.

Dr De Nardo said the institute would still hold data on premises but would also leverage the cloud to enable global collaboration to develop more effective cancer treatments.

“We will be able to tackle that not just within the four walls of the Olivia Newton John Cancer Research Institute, but essentially expand those collaborations globally and be able to share these data sets.

“Experts around the world are looking at the same piece of information, contributing to that rich data set, and being able to work towards understanding the probability of the likely side effects and survival rates of a specific treatment by applying these algorithms to known therapies.”

Scientists at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute.

Olivia Newton John cancer research – which has led 157 clinical trials since 2019 – is using a combination of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and HPE Alletra Storage Server 4000 with Qumulo solutions.

“Essentially, the plumbing that we had to create (for) this foundation to support these growth in technologies wasn’t there,” Dr De Nardo said.

“This solution with HPE really helps us ensure that we’ve got the infrastructure to be able to enhance our operational efficiencies and create that opportunity for new innovations and continue to push the boundaries in discovering these breakthroughs”

The institute has worked on a blood test that can tell when breast cancer returns. It also found an antibody that can identify and attack glioblastoma brain tumours and began clinical trials on the treatment in 2022.

James Eagleton – HPE’s general manager of data services and storage for the South Pacific region – said the partnership aimed to accelerate cancer research.

James Eagleton, HPE general manager of data services and storage for the South Pacific region.

“From an HP point of view, we want to be able to make sure that we’re enabling the capturing, the storing, the managing, and also the protection of the data throughout that life cycle, because every bite of data could be a potential new breakthrough,” he said.

Mr Eagleton said HPE had also changed its approach to data centres.

“The data isn’t in the data centre anymore. It’s being generated. In the case of ONJCRI by the genomic data that’s being collected, the pathology slides, the microscopy data.

“We’re all walking around with smart devices that are measuring heart rates, etc … and we’re trying to help our customers manage that. As they collect more data, there’s the variety, the location, and safe and secure access.”