Researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research in London and RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin have developed an AI tool capable of predicting how patients with advanced bowel cancer will respond to bevacizumab, a drug recently approved by the NHS (the UK's public health service) for this condition. The tool, called PhenMap, analyses the genetic makeup of tumours to identify patterns in patient responses and can flag those carrying a specific gene mutation who are at high risk of experiencing serious side-effects — such as blood clots and gastrointestinal complications — without benefiting from the treatment. With nearly 10,000 advanced bowel cancer cases diagnosed in the UK each year and a five-year survival rate as low as 10%, researchers say the tool could spare thousands of patients from ineffective treatment, though they caution it must be validated on a larger patient cohort before it can be adopted in clinical settings.