SensNews November 2018

23 Sensor100 November 2018 Big news:We are extending the Longitude Prize The Longitude Prize has announced that it has extended the deadline: the prize will remain open beyond the original 2019 deadline to at least 31 December 2020 or until a winner is chosen. The Longitude Prize is searching for a transformative point-of-care diagnostic test to help reduce the misuse or overuse of antibiotics. Currently there are 78 teams com- peting for the Prize rom 14 countries. Read more... 14 November BloodTest Detects and Classifies Cancer at its Earliest Stages Cancer scientists led by principal investigator Dr. Daniel De Carvalho at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, have combined “liquid biopsy,” epigenetic alterations and machine learning to develop a blood test to detect and classify cancer at its earliest stages. By profiling epigenetic alterations instead of mu- tations, the team was able to identify thousands of modifications unique to each cancer type. Then, using a big data approach, they applied machine learning to create classifiers able to identify the presence of cancer-derived DNA within blood samples and to determine what cancer type. This basically turns the “one needle in the haystack” problem into a more solvable “thousands of needles in the haystack,” where the computer just needs to find a few needles to define which haystack has nee- dles. Reported by: Technology Networks November 15th View on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBey2ml4XHE