
Shannon Westin, MD, MPH
2024 Collaborative Research Development Grant – Microsoft AI for Health Recipient
MD Anderson Cancer Center
AI-guided single-cell transfer learning model to predict precision medicine in ovarian cancer
Project Summary
Ovarian cancer patients are often diagnosed at an advanced stage and develop resistance to standard-of-care therapy. Recent studies have produced clinical drug predictions by machine learning, however, insufficient patient numbers and lack of knowledge of drug targets limit their use. Our goal is to accelerate the discovery of innovative, actionable therapies through integrative network-based AI models in an individualized manner.
Specifically, we will first develop and optimize multiomics-based biomarkers to predict clinical outcomes to standard-of-care therapies. For most of the non-responders to conventional treatment, we will then establish and validate a novel AI framework to identify actionable drugs for personalized therapy by “transfer learning” using integrated single-cell data. By AI-guided transfer learning, we aim to contextualize ovarian cancer patients’ tumor cells to best match cell lines with known susceptibility to drugs and drug combinations.
We will further integrate clinical features with multi-omics data to predict new treatment options for ovarian cancer patients by AI. Taken together, this proposal develops systems-level network-based AI models to prioritize personalized therapies based on tumor compositions at various resolution levels. This collaborative teamwork is only made possible due to availability of comprehensive clinical data across diverse populations of ovarian cancer patients from the Ovarian Cancer Moon Shot program at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Bio
Professor
Medical Director, Gynecologic Oncology Center
Director, Early Drug Development and Phase I Trials
Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine
The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Westin received her doctorate of Medicine from the University of Florida College of Medicine. She completed Obstetrics and Gynecology residency at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. During fellowship, she received an MPH with a concentration in epidemiology from the University of Texas, School of Public Health. In addition to her training in Gynecologic Oncology, she also completed a short fellowship in Investigational Cancer Therapeutics. She joined the faculty at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2010. She has been honored as a K12 scholar, Andrew Sabin Family Fellow, CURE Magazine Ovarian Cancer Hero and a Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) Foundation Scholar Investigator.
Dr. Westin focuses on developmental therapeutics and the use of biomarkers to predict response and recurrence in gynecologic malignancies. She currently serves as the Medical Director of the Gynecologic Oncology Center, Director of Early Drug Development and Phase I trials in her department and is a Co-Director of the Ovarian Cancer Moonshot. Dr. Westin is a member of the NRG Oncology – GOG Developmental Therapeutics, Phase I, and Early Phase Protocol Oversight committees. She is the co-PI for two major projects in her institution’s SPORE in Ovarian Cancer. In addition, she is currently the PI or co-PI for greater than 15 novel treatment trials in gynecologic malignancies. Most recently, she served as the global principal investigator for the GOG3041/DUO-E phase III clinical trial exploring the addition of immunotherapy and PARP inhibitors to chemotherapy in advanced/recurrent endometrial cancer.
Dr. Westin has authored or co-authored greater than 200 scientific publications, book chapters and invited articles. She has been invited to lecture as an expert on clinical trials, genomic testing and targeted therapy in gynecologic malignancies in national and international venues. She was selected for the competitive American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Leadership Development program and serves on five ASCO committees including the Communications Committee and Gynecologic Cancer Guidelines Group. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) and the GOG Foundation. In addition to serving on the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Uterine Task Force and Gynecologic Cancer Steering Committee (GCSC), she serves as a co-chair of the GCSC Ovarian Cancer Task Force and the MDACC Executive Scientific Review Committee.