Google AI Research Releases DeepSomatic: A New AI Model that Identifies Cancer Cell Genetic Variants

Google Research and UC Santa Cruz developed DeepSomatic, an AI model that accurately identifies somatic small genetic variants in cancer genomes across multiple sequencing platforms, including Illumina short reads, PacBio HiFi, and Oxford Nanopore long reads. Utilizing a convolutional neural network that processes image-like tensors encoding aligned read data, DeepSomatic distinguishes inherited from acquired variants and supports both tumor-normal and tumor-only workflows, demonstrating superior detection by uncovering previously missed variants in pediatric leukemia.