By treating cancer like an information processing system, Microsoft researchers are able to adapt tools typically used to model computational processes to model biological ones. Ultimately, the company hopes to create molecular computers to programme the body to fight cancer cells immediately after detection. Microsoft wants to take the biological data that is available and use analysis tools to better understand and treat the disease.

At the moment, there is so much data available, it is impossible for a person to go through and understand it all. Machine learning can process the information much faster than humans and make it easier to understand. Machine learning is also being paired with computer vision to give radiologists a more detailed understanding of how a patient’s tumour is progressing. Researchers are working on a system that could eventually evaluate 3D scans by analysing pixels to tell the radiologist exactly how much a tumour has grown, shrunk or changed shape since the last scan.

“We can use methods that we’ve developed for programming computers to program biology, and then unlock even more applications and even better treatments,” said Andrew Phillips, head of the biological computation research group at the Microsoft Cambridge Lab.

Phillips is working to create a molecular computer that could be put inside a cell to monitor for disease. If the sensor detected a disease, such as cancer, it would activate a response to fight it. Research such as this would also use traditional computing and repurpose it into medical or biotechnology applications, so the body could be programmed to fight a disease in the way a computer is programmed to do something.

Though the research is still in the early stages, Mr Phillips claims it could be technically possible to put in a smart molecular system to fight a disease in this way, in “five to 10 years time”.