AI medical trial: AstraZeneca evaluates "AI pathology" in real-world lung and breast cancer practice (multinational, observational)

1Lung and breast cancer diagnosis and pathology

AstraZeneca's clinical study (NCT06827132) evaluates how AI is used in real-world practice in the pathology workup of patients with suspected lung and breast cancer — a multinational observational study.

2Compared against current pathology practice

Per the registry summary, the goal is to evaluate "the current pathology practices and the utilization of computational pathology plus artificial intelligence algorithms in patients with suspected lung and breast cancer." It is observational (no intervention), with target enrollment 600 and a period of October 25, 2025 – May 31, 2027; status as of the check date is active, not recruiting.

3Pathology as the foundation

Pathology — examining tissue under the microscope to confirm cancer type — is central to oncology. Increasingly, slides are digitized (digital pathology) and AI algorithms assist with region extraction, classification, and quantification (computational pathology).

Rather than testing a new tool's performance, this study characterizes how AI pathology is actually adopted into clinical workflow, from a pharmaceutical-company perspective (relevant to patient selection / biomarker assessment for cancer therapies).

4Not testing performance, but examining practice

Medical AI research brings to mind measuring the performance of a new tool. That is not the purpose here.

Pathology, evaluating tissue under a microscope to establish the presence and type of cancer, is the foundation of cancer care. Digitising slides and using AI algorithms to assist segmentation, classification and quantification — computational pathology — has been spreading. This is a multinational observational study led by a major pharmaceutical company, targeting 600 cases from October 2025 to May 2027.