Carsten Marr Receives Eugen Münch Award
The jury for the Eugen Münch Award for Innovative Healthcare has announced the winners for 2024. In the category "Science and Practical Application," Dr. Carsten Marr from Helmholtz Munich was honored for his groundbreaking research on AI-driven diagnostics for blood disorders. The award includes a €20,000 prize.
Leukemia Diagnostics with AI
Carsten Marr is at the forefront of advancing AI models for the automated diagnosis of severe blood disorders. He has successfully developed an AI model that not only distinguishes healthy cells from those affected by Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) but also identifies genetic subtypes of the disease. This breakthrough was made possible by training a cutting-edge deep neural network using multi-instance learning and explainable AI techniques.
Currently, leukemia diagnostics rely on labor-intensive methods, where hundreds of blood cells are analyzed under a microscope by cytologists. Accurate cancer classification is critical for treatment decisions, and speed is often crucial. Marr’s AI model has the potential to significantly reduce the workload of laboratory experts while enhancing the robustness, speed, and consistency of diagnostics.
Moreover, Marr and his team have leveraged single cell data to identify novel cell proteins that could serve as viable therapeutic targets. This opens the door to the development of innovative treatments in the future.
About Carsten Marr
Dr. Carsten Marr studied physics at the Technical University of Munich. After conducting international research and earning his PhD at TU Darmstadt, he joined the Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at Helmholtz Munich in 2008, where he specialized in stem cell research. In 2017, he was honored with the Erwin Schrödinger Prize, followed by an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019. Since 2021, he has been the Director of the Institute of AI for Health at Helmholtz Munich. His work has been featured in prestigious journals such as Nature Machine Intelligence, PLOS Digital Health, Blood, and Nature Biotechnology.