This Zhang “spatial ecotype” paper that just made CNN/Jake Tapper is fascinating.
The bigger shift isn’t just AI itself — it’s the idea that tumors may behave more like adaptive ecosystems with recurring spatial organizational states rather than random collections of malignant cells.
AI/spatial biology models are increasingly looking at:
– cellular neighborhoods
– immune localization
– stromal architecture
– signaling environments
– and multicellular organization across tissue.
Feels like oncology is moving away from isolated pathway thinking and toward systems-level organizational biology.
That may also explain why areas involving immune trafficking and chemokine signaling (including pathways like CCR5) are attracting growing attention in tumor microenvironment research.