By Raphael Boyd
Publication Date: 2026-04-13 09:00:00
A new AI-driven method of identifying how patients with advanced bowel cancer respond to a drug recently launched on the NHS has been announced.
Researchers at the London Institute of Cancer Research and the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin developed the method with the aim of potentially sparing thousands of patients from receiving drugs that would be ineffective in fighting cancer.
In the UK alone, almost 10,000 cases of advanced bowel cancer are diagnosed each year, with a particular rise in diagnoses among young adults. Colorectal cancer has the second-highest mortality rate of all cancers, behind only lung cancer, and while survival rates can be as high as 98% if detected early, the five-year survival rate for advanced colorectal cancer can be as low as 10%.
The study looked at 117 European bowel cancer patients treated with chemotherapy and bevacizumab, a drug approved by the NHS in December. Bevacizumab works through…
