A transformer trained on longitudinal lab data from 3,905 patients predicts 162 treatment-associated complications up to two years before clinical onset, using only routine blood work already collected in standard oncological care.
Routine laboratory panels drawn during cancer treatment constitute longitudinal physiological recordings of organ function, yet their temporal structure is discarded by single-timepoint prognostic tools. A transformer trained on 2,777,595 laboratory measurements from 3,905 patients with multiple myeloma or ovarian cancer predicted the two-year onset of 162 treatment-associated complications, including therapy-related myelodysplastic syndromes, spanning eight clinical categories, achieving 1.5- to 6.1-fold enrichment above prevalence at the group level. It matched or outperformed non-sequential baselines across grouped endpoints (AUROC gains up to +0.11), demonstrating that longitudinal laboratory trajectories capture evolving complication-specific physiology inaccessible from isolated measurements. Predictions generalised across both cancers, divergence concentrating in disease-specific complications, and biomarker masking recovered signatures consistent with established pathophysiology. External validation on MIMIC-IV and MMRF CoMMpass confirmed transferability across independent healthcare systems (AUROC up to 0.85). Routine oncological laboratory data encode organ deterioration weeks to months before clinical onset, enabling complication-specific surveillance without additional testing infrastructure.
| Endpoint | AUROC | AP | Enrichment | Δ vs. best baseline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Myelodysplastic syndromes | 0.71 | 0.081 | 6.1× | +0.11 |
| Fungal infections | 0.75 | 0.101 | 3.1× | +0.09 |
| Kidney disease | 0.74 | 0.372 | 2.5× | 0.00 |
| Metastatic disease | 0.73 | 0.483 | 2.1× | 0.00 |
| All-cause mortality | 0.70 | 0.213 | 1.8× | +0.04 |
| Type 2 diabetes | 0.65 | 0.074 | 1.8× | +0.04 |
| Cardiovascular diseases | 0.68 | 0.480 | 1.6× | +0.05 |
| Bacterial infections | 0.66 | 0.403 | 1.5× | +0.01 |