Biology Current Events

Week: December 10, 2023- December 13, 2023

Life Sciences 11 (Mr Friesan)
Weikai (Victor) Liu
Article Name: A Sugar Analysis Could Reveal Different Types of Cancer
Date: December 13, 2023
Source: Science Daily
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/12/231213011648.htm

Introduction

The University of Gothenburg, conducted a research and published on science direct

stating that in the future that a little saliva may be enough to detect different types of
cancer.

Summary

With the help of AI, the University of Gothenburg could possibly interpret changes in
glycans, which are a specific sugar that links to the protein within our cells. The glycan’s
structure defines how will the protein function. Any alternations in this type of sugar
implies sickness, inflammation or diseases. The researchers looked at 220 patients whom
carried 11 different cancers, and looked deep into their glycan structures. With the
assistance from AI, they successfully identified the structures of sugar in association with
the cancer.

Significance

This article is significant due to many reasons: 1, it is completed with the help of artificial
intelligence. As 21st century processes, AI comes into our daily life. It is a tool humans use
to assist with every aspect of our lives, but its uses are limited as most of the time it is
useless against humans. However, as we entered in the 2020s, AI progresses in speed of
rockets and by this article, we could infer that the AI gives a more reliable results rather
then human statistics. Therefore, we could speculate that AI will assist us more into
medical and health. 2, cancer is one of the major diseases in the world. If the sugar test
could be cheap and effective, it is a significant step towards cancer treatments as early
stages of cancer is more easy to deal with. Therefore, as people do body checks once or
twice a year, it will then leads to a great decrease in cancer patients.
Citations
Jon Lundstrøm, James Urban, Daniel Bojar. Decoding glycomics with a
suite of methods for differential expression analysis. Cell Reports
Methods, 2023; 100652 DOI: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100652