In early 2024, the World Health Organization predicted that by 2050 there will be more than 35 million new cancer cases worldwide, an increase of 77% from 20 million in 2022. Driven by aging and growing populations as well as lifestyle factors, the cancer burden will strongly impact countries around the world. In Japan, doctors and engineers are harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to help meet a massive demand for tools that can help diagnose and treat cancer and related diseases. Two innovative medical startups in Tokyo are commercializing their innovations to improve the health of people everywhere.
Early and correct diagnosis is essential in the fight against diseases such as cancer. However, a recent study found that in the United States, about 800,000 people die or become permanently disabled each year due to misdiagnoses and cancers that were not detected early. Mainly because they are detected too late, gastrointestinal (GI) cancers are the leading cause of cancer mortality in Japan and worldwide. Although an endoscopic exam can detect gastrointestinal cancers at an early stage, doctors miss about 20% when examining patients’ upper gastrointestinal tract.
But what if AI could simply check gastroscopy photographs and find missed challenge points?The gastroAI G design by AI Medical Service Inc. it does just that. It is an artificial intelligence formula that analyzes gastroscopy photographs in real time with doctors and provides advice. in the review of possible areas of interest. When an endoscopist inserts a gastroscope into a patient’s abdomen and performs the same usual procedure, gastroAI immediately examines the photographs. If you run into a challenging spot, the software highlights the domain in a matter of seconds and presents a warning: “Consider a biopsy. “The endoscopist makes the diagnosis and is carried away by the need for a biopsy and makes a diagnosis based on the advice in the formula.
“The endoscopic examination is necessarily a process of symbolic popularity,” explains Tada Tomohiro, CEO of AI Medical Service. “Doctors read about the abdomen or colon and see if there is an injury or not. The formula acts as an assistant, asking the doctor to double-check for potential problem areas. Even if the accuracy of doctors decreases from morning to afternoon, the AI formula does not get tired.
After working in Tokyo hospitals, Tada opened a gastroenterology and proctology clinic in Saitama Prefecture in 2006, where he and other staff performed 8,000 to 9,000 endoscopic examinations a year, making it one of the centers of medical most productive gastrointestinal tract in the country. Array Even as he opened more clinics, Tada began looking for new tactics to reduce missed diagnoses. He learned that AI could surpass human functions in symbol recognition, a very important detail in the detection of gastrointestinal cancers.
gastroAI model-G makes instant recommendations such as “Consider biopsy” for imaginable lesions.
In 2016, he began applying AI equipment to endoscopic medicine. He trained a deep-learning AI formula, collected about 200,000 high-definition videos on gastrointestinal medicine, and developed what he describes as the world’s first AI formula for the early detection of gastric and esophageal cancer. cancer. In 2017, Tada founded AI Medical Service and later established subsidiaries in the United States and Singapore. One of the company’s benefits is a strong research network that provides it with insights from more than a hundred medical centers in Japan, in addition to Tokyo University Hospital, Keio University Hospital, and Osaka International Cancer Institute. Another asset lies in its links with manufacturers. AI Medical Service has focused on creating software that can be used with as many endoscopes as possible. .
“Japan is one of the leading endoscope brands,” says Tada. “Working with brands is a strategy to make Japan the world’s number one in medical technology. “
AI Medical Service’s diagnostic formula has been approved by regulators in Japan, Brazil and Singapore, and the company has raised about 14. 5 billion yen ($93. 4 million) in investments from venture capital firms and government grants . In 2024, AI Medical Service was included in Forbes Asia’s list of one hundred small businesses and startups to watch that are attracting investors’ attention. Tada now aims to roll out its product in Singapore, update the formulation as AI evolves, gain approval from US regulators, and direct other cancer bureaucracies to AI screening, while continuing its clinical work.
“Regardless of whether I am working as a doctor, clinic director or a startup CEO, my goal does not change,” says Tada. “My motivation is to improve medical practice. Ultimately, we want to reduce the rate of missed cancer detection to zero.”
Across town at Tokyo Medical University Hospital, a cancer patient lies down while a cone-shaped device on a robotic arm is positioned over his abdomen. The device delivers ultrasound energy to the patient’s pancreas and generates localized heat of up to 100 degrees Celsius that destroys cancer cells in the organ. Other types of ultrasound waves allow doctors to monitor exactly the location of the heated region. The procedure is minimally invasive, does not involve any surgery or anesthesia, and only lasts about half an hour.
This technique employs high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). In conventional radiotherapy, radiation damages both cancer cells and the surrounding healthy cells that it passes through. In contrast, HIFU waves can be focused on a small region inside the body and do not damage the healthy cells they pass through. While the focal energy decreases with the depth below the skin, it can be used repeatedly in cases where cancers recur frequently.
“With high-intensity targeted ultrasound, patients can be treated with just two sessions on an outpatient basis,” explains Satoh Tohru, CEO of Sonire Therapeutics Inc.
In studies around the world, targeted ultrasound has been used to target cancers of the brain, breast, prostate and other organs. In Japan, HIFU is already used to treat an enlarged prostate, Parkinson’s disease, and a must-have tremor. Japanese doctors now hope that HIFU will become a folk remedy for pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest and most recurrent cancers. In addition, approximately 70% of pancreatic cancer cases are detected after the disease has progressed too far to be surgically removed, resulting in a three-year survival rate of only 3. 2%. Even after surgery, the cancer comes back in about 80% of patients.
Pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat, in part because the organ rises and falls as the patient breathes, causing the healing radiation to have an effect on the surrounding gastrointestinal tract.
“The pancreas is resistant to radiation, so it requires high doses during radiotherapy, which can involve daily sessions for six weeks,” says Satoh Tohru, CEO of SONIRE Therapeutics Inc., a Tokyo startup developing next-generation HIFU technology for cancer treatment. “With SONIRE’s HIFU, patients are expected to be treated with only two sessions on an outpatient basis.”
The special thing about the SONIRE generation is that it uses cavitation. Cavitation, often seen around underwater propellers, is the formation of fuel bubbles in a liquid due to adjustments in pressure. The use of cavitation allows doctors, as it should, to visualize the domain of the remedy to ensure effective treatment and increases the efficiency of heating, reducing treatment time.
The results suggest that HIFU could be effective when used with traditional remedies. The median survival of patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer after treatment with chemotherapy alone was 288 days, but when combined with HIFU it was 648 days, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Current Oncology.
Satoh co-founded SONIRE in 2020 based on studies that began about 12 years earlier at Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, and Tohoku University. Backed by Japanese venture capital firms, SONIRE temporarily raised 730 million yen ($4. 7 million) in funding. This allowed it to expand its own HIFU treatment formula as a next-generation targeted ultrasound.
Sonire’s next-generation HIFU treatment formula can target pancreatic cancer cells with high-intensity, non-invasive ultrasound.
SONIRE’s innovation has earned it national and foreign recognition. In 2023, he decided on the J-Startup new business program of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The following year, its HIFU treatment formula was designated as a breakthrough device for pancreatic cancer through the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. U. S. These distinctions opened doors.
With its studies and clinical partners, SONIRE is lately conducting the world’s first randomized controlled trial on HIFU treatment for pancreatic cancer. The study conducted at six hospitals across Japan is designed to give hope to patients, their families and healthcare professionals, and will track the survival outcomes of 90 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer, adding 30 undergoing chemotherapy and 60 undergoing chemotherapy and HIFU treatment.
SONIRE aims to complete enrollment in early 2025 and obtain regulatory approval for HIFU therapy in Japan in 2027. Meanwhile, a U.S. study is also being prepared, with the aim of obtaining U.S. approval in 2028. From there, the company hopes to expand not only into other markets, but other types of cancer.
“We need to offer more effective and safer cancer treatments to as many patients as possible on a temporary basis,” says Satoh. “We need to transcend the barriers between prescription drugs and medical devices, and one of the tactics to achieve this is through HIFU remedy for cancer patients. “
Note: All Japanese names in this article are given in the traditional Japanese order, with surname first.
To learn more about AI Medical Service Inc., click here.
For more information about SONIRE Therapeutics Inc. , click here.