Leveraging Digital Twins for Stratification of Patients with Breast Cancer and Treatment Optimization in Geriatric Oncology: Multivariate Clustering Analysis.

Abstract

Background: Defining optimal adjuvant therapeutic strategies for older adult patients with breast cancer remains a challenge, given that this population is often overlooked and underserved in clinical research and decision-making tools.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop a prognostic and treatment guidance tool tailored to older adult patients using artificial intelligence (AI) and a combination of clinical and biological features.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on data from women aged 70+ years with HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer treated at the French Léon Bérard Cancer Center between 1997 and 2016. Manifold learning and machine learning algorithms were applied to uncover complex data relationships and develop predictive models. Predictors included age, BMI, comorbidities, hemoglobin levels, lymphocyte counts, hormone receptor status, Scarff-Bloom-Richardson grade, tumor size, and lymph node involvement. The dimension reduction technique PaCMAP was used to map patient profiles into a 3D space, allowing comparison with similar cases to estimate prognoses and potential treatment benefits.

Results: Out of 1229 initial patients, 793 were included after data refinement. The selected predictors demonstrated high predictive efficacy for 5-year mortality, with mean area under the curve scores of 0.81 for Random Forest Classification and 0.76 for Support Vector Classifier. The tool categorized patients into prognostic clusters and enabled the estimation of treatment outcomes, such as chemotherapy benefits. Unlike traditional models that focus on isolated factors, this AI-based approach integrates multiple clinical and biological features to generate a comprehensive biomedical profile.

Conclusions: This study introduces a novel AI-driven prognostic tool for older adult patients with breast cancer, enhancing treatment guidance by leveraging advanced machine learning techniques. The model provides a more nuanced understanding of disease dynamics and therapeutic strategies, emphasizing the importance of personalized oncology care.