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The researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras have developed an AI tool that can be used to analyze the cancer-causing mutations in cells.

The tool, NBDriver (Neighbourhood Driver), can differentiate between harmful 'driver' mutations and neutral 'passengers' mutations.

This unexplored technique to look into the genome neighbourhood to determine its nature is a novel one since the mutation depends upon the neighbourhood.

The Head of the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science B Ravindran informed that one of the major issues faced by the cancer researchers is to differentiate between 'driver' mutations and 'passengers' mutations.

The 'driver' mutations enable the cancer cells to grow whereas the 'passenger' mutations doces not affect the disease's progression.

The lead author of the paper and the Master's student in the Dept. of Biotechnology at IIT-Madras Shayantan Banerjee informed that the difference in the pattern of the driver and passenger mutations' sequence can be shown through the robust statistical modelling.

Prof Karthik Raman from the Dept. of Biotechnology at IIT-Madras informed that the accuracy of the NBDriver is 89%. The tool ranked second out of the total 11 prediction algorithms and the 1st ranked tool, FATHMM, achieved 91% accuracy.

The group is planning to make NBDriver a part of the cancer genomic sequence analysis. In future, the group is also aiming to develop an easy-to-use drag-and-drop web interface which will help cancer researchers in prediction and extracting genomic information with limited computational programming skills on their preferred mutation set.