Informatics tools to better detect immune-related side effects in cancer patients
Official title: Informatics strategies to improve immune-related adverse event detection in cancer patients
Funded at Brigham and Women's Hospital · NIH-11391040 · Data updated 2026-11-12
A new informatics approach using smart language models will help doctors identify and track immune-related side effects from cancer immunotherapy in electronic health records, aiming to improve patient care.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Brigham and Women's Hospital NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Boston, United States) |
| Project start | September 1, 2024 |
| Project end | August 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $405,992 |
| NIH project number | 5R01CA294033-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11391040 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Adults with cancer who have been treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and whose health records will be analyzed for irAE detection.
✕Less likely to help
Patients not treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors or whose records are not part of the analyzed datasets may not benefit directly.
What this research studies
This project develops and tests natural language processing methods to find and monitor immune-related adverse events in cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. It uses both unstructured clinical notes and structured data in the EHR to improve accuracy and scalability. The goal is to support survivorship care, clinical research, and pharmacovigilance by making irAEs easier to identify across large patient populations. The work includes a clinical trial to assess whether informatics-assisted detection improves data capture for an irAE biorepository.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, patients could experience better monitoring and management of immune-related side effects, improving long-term quality of life.
How similar studies have gone: Previous efforts show promise for NLP-based extraction of adverse events from clinical text, with ongoing work to scale to EHR data.
Where this research is happening
-
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Aerts, Hugo — Brigham and Women's Hospital
- Study coordinator: Aerts, Hugo
Related research
Other NIH-funded projects on the same topics.
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AI to detect immune-related side effects after cancer immunotherapy
This project uses AI language models to find and flag immune-related side effects in medical records of people treated with immune checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapies.
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Improving detection of immune-related side effects in cancer patients
This study is looking to make it easier to spot side effects that can happen to cancer patients using new immune treatments, so if you join, your health records will help us learn how to better track and understand these issues for better care.
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Mycophenolate mofetil with prednisone for immune-related hepatitis from cancer therapy
This study tests whether starting mycophenolate mofetil plus prednisone can help liver inflammation caused by immune checkpoint inhibitors in adults with moderate to severe immune-related hepatitis.
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Thymosin Alpha-1 plus PD-1 therapy in older adults with advanced melanoma
This trial tests whether adding Thymosin Alpha-1 to a PD-1 antibody helps people age 60 and up with advanced melanoma.
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Inhaled budesonide to prevent recurrent checkpoint inhibitor–related pneumonitis
This study tests whether adding inhaled budesonide to usual care can prevent recurrence of pneumonitis in adults who developed grade 2 or higher lung inflammation from checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.
-
Investigating serum ferritin as a biomarker for immune-related adverse events
This study is testing if a blood marker called serum ferritin can help doctors identify and predict immune-related side effects in patients with cancer receiving different types of treatment.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.