Neuroscientist ➡️ Thoracic Medical Oncologist specializing in #earlydetection #AI #ML @mghcancercenter @harvard Cat mom. Human mom. Wife. Opinions mine.
Boston, MA
Joined January 2010
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Allison Chang retweeted
I worry this makes things really hard for extremely attractive people who just want to seduce an OpenAI or Anthropic employee for their money
Allison Chang retweeted
Following Pope Leo XIV’s diagnosis and lung cancer surgery, ALCSI founder and thoracic surgeon Dr. Jeff Yang (@ChiFuJeffYang) spoke with The New York Times (@nytimes) and several TV news channels about the lifesaving benefits of lung cancer screening and the excellent outcomes that are possible when lung cancer is found early. We wish Pope Leo XIV a smooth and speedy recovery 💕
nytimes.com/2026/10/14/well/…
There’s something profound about the Pope being diagnosed with #lungcancer. For too long, patients with lung cancer have been stigmatized and blamed for their own disease. Now the Pope himself is facing this diagnosis.
I hope this helps lift some of the shame patients carry and reminds us all that lung cancer is not a moral failing. #lcsm
Allison Chang retweeted
ALCSI’s Deepti Srinivasan (@DeeptiSrini) gave a terrific presentation at the World Conference on Lung Cancer (#WCLC26). She presented the first national estimate of lung cancer incidence among people who have never smoked in the United States, finding that nearly 30,000 people who have never smoked are diagnosed with lung cancer each year.
Our team also found that 17% of women, 77% of U.S Asian women, and 58% of patients under the age of 40 had never smoked. This work highlights the urgent need to develop strategies for early detection in people who have never smoked.
I’m sick of the “but China” retorts—we need to rein this in. I mean, do we really think a superintelligent recursively self-improving #AI is going to respect our national interests anyway? The risks transcend state-level competition; this is a global safety issue.
Highly recommend @ezraklein’s recent podcasts on this topic.
Allison Chang retweeted
‼️ SAVE THIS TWEET if you see patients with EGFR exon 20 NSCLC ‼️
Beautiful discussion by @LudaBazhenovaMD here at #WCLC26
As new options emerge for our patients, how do we choose?
Allison Chang retweeted
Dr. @alexdrilon at #WCLC26 presents 1L cohort of ARROS-1 trial of zidesamtinib in pts with ROS1 NSCLC. What a waterfall plot. RR 94% with 15% CR. mPFS not reached, PFS at 6m was 96% and at 12m was 90%. Intracranial RR 100%. In 78 pts who did not have brain metastases at baseline, no CNS events occurred to date. These are fantastic outcomes.
#KALC2026 What an incredible experience—fascinating scientific program with speakers from all over the world, and spectacular sightseeing with both old friends and new. Many thanks to our generous hosts! @kimyw_snu_pulm @Lydia_SoYeonKim
Could not agree more with Dr. Heuvelmans—an impressive AUC is not sufficient to implement healthcare #AI tools. We need prospectively-validated thresholds to determine how to actually use these models to improve patient outcomes. #lungcancerscreening #WCLC2026
Outstanding talk by Dr. Yeon Wook Kim @kimyw_snu_pulm on challenges and advances in #lungcancer risk stratification. Risk stratification with novel models is the key to personalizing screening approaches and triaging abnormal results in order to both catch more cancers at an early stage and protect against overtreatment. #lcsm #WCLC26
‼️ Wild that this isn’t already standard.
If DNA synthesis can be ordered by mail, screening and recordkeeping should be mandatory. #AI is accelerating biosecurity risks — oversight needs to keep pace.
No one should be able to order a bioweapon through the mail.
@IFP & @JoinFAI are proud to co-lead an open letter calling for mandatory DNA synthesis screening & recordkeeping.
Signatories include:
- Sam Altman, CEO & Co-Founder, OpenAI
- Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder, Anthropic
- David Baker, Director, Institute for Protein Design; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient
- Patrick Collison, CEO & Co-Founder, Stripe
- Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
- Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient
- Emily Leproust, CEO & Co-Founder, Twist Bioscience
- Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School
- Gerald W. Parker, former Special Assistant to the President for Biosecurity and Pandemic Response
- Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI
- Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics, George Mason University
- Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, Meta; Founder, Scale AI
- Christine E. Wormuth, President & CEO, Nuclear Threat Initiative; 25th Secretary of the Army
Read the letter and see the full list of signatories: screendna.org
Many DNA synthesis companies voluntarily screen orders to mitigate biosecurity risks, but no law requires them to do so.
Leaders in AI, biotech, life sciences, national security, and the nucleic acid synthesis industry agree that Congress should act to strengthen safeguards against biological threats.
@deanwball put it well in the WSJ:
“If you’re synthesizing the stuff that yields biological life and viruses, we’re asking you to screen to see whether it is dangerous in some way. That seems like a reasonable thing for society to insist upon.”
Allison Chang retweeted
@StephenVLiu - the actual pCR rate is 34% based on the report. They left out 11 patients from the denominator. It is misleading…
#ASCO26 With neoadjuvant lorlatinib, pCR 47% and MPR 81%. Amazing. RR 84% and 1y EFS 97%. Down staging of nodes in 90%. Very reassuring and consistency safety results. Phenomenal clinical results.
Very excited about this upcoming trial using a validated clinicogenomic brain met prediction #AI model--intensified MRI surveillance is a simple, low-risk, and impactful intervention. So excited to be seeing interventional clinical trial designs like this. Would love to make something like this happen in lung! @pike_lab #ASCO2026 #lcsm
You don’t have to be a GI oncologist to appreciate this moment. #ASCO2026
The five newest attendings in the @MassGenBrigham thoracic oncology group! 💅🏻💪 #ASCO2026 @MGHThoracicOnc
‼️ Big news in the early detection world: Galleri (a methylation-based multi-cancer detection test) failed to meet its primary endpoint of reduction of stage III/IV cancer diagnosis in a large prospective randomized trial with the NHS. #ASCO2026
- PPV ~50%, and among the false positives, about half (n=404) underwent invasive procedures as part of their workup. 😬
- ~2/3 of people diagnosed with cancer had a negative Galleri test (false negative)
- Some early signals of greater benefit in certain cancers but overall not powered for that.
- Galleri arm detected more cancers, but the clinical benefit of this is not yet clear.
- Important to remember that surrogate endpoints (stage III/IV diagnoses and stage IV diagnoses) do not correlate well with survival in all cancer types.
⭐️ My take: I think this type of cancer detection assay will have clinical value in some context(s), but we still have a ways to go before we know how to use it. Use in higher risk patients? Limit assay to detect only certain cancers? Lots of work to be done. 💪
