Artificial intelligence empowering precision oncology: The convergence and innovation of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine wisdom

Vollständiger Abstract

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The prevention and treatment of malignant tumors remain a major global health challenge. Owing to the marked heterogeneity and dynamic evolution of cancer, conventional diagnostic and therapeutic paradigms are increasingly inadequate for the demands of precision medicine. Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the transition of comprehensive cancer care from experience-driven practice toward data-driven, dynamically supported decision-making. By leveraging machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, graph neural networks, and multimodal data fusion, AI has been widely applied across key domains of oncology, including cancer screening, medical image interpretation, digital pathology analysis, molecular subtyping, treatment response assessment, and prognostic prediction. These advances provide new technical pathways for individualized diagnosis and treatment as well as whole-course disease management. At the same time, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), with its holistic view and treatment based on syndrome differentiation, offers unique theoretical and practical advantages in comprehensive cancer prevention and treatment. However, modern TCM research has long been constrained by the limited objectification of syndromes, substantial heterogeneity in clinical data, complex mechanisms underlying the actions of Chinese herbs, and the lack of standardized evaluation systems. In recent years, AI has been increasingly applied in TCM research, including knowledge mining from classical medical texts and clinical records, syndrome identification, analysis of herbal compatibility rules, screening of active constituents, prediction of therapeutic targets, and construction of efficacy evaluation models. These developments provide a novel methodological foundation for integrating TCM with modern precision oncology. Against this background, this review systematically summarizes the integration pathways, application value, and practical challenges of AI in integrated TCM and Western medicine for cancer treatment, with the aim of providing a theoretical basis and practical reference for the development of intelligent integrated precision oncology.