How mathematics is helping to fight cancer
- The challenge of drug resistance. The standard treatment for most cancers involves a combination of surgery and...
- Chemotherapy itself causes resistance. Our team is currently focused on developing a deeper understanding of how cancer...
- Inspiring nanomedicine. We have also used mathematical modelling, integrated with...
How does an oncologist use math?
In this way, knowledge-based predictive mathematical modeling is used to fill in gaps in sparse data; guide and train machine learning algorithms; provide actionable interpretations of complex data sets, and make predictions of cancer progression and response to therapy on a patient-specific basis.
How has technology helped cancer?
Technologies and innovations like CRISPR, artificial intelligence, telehealth, the Infinium Assay, cryo-electron microscopy, and robotic surgery are helping accelerate progress against cancer.
How does technology help in detecting and treating cancer?
Another new technology in cancer treatment is Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IMGT), which also employs linear accelerators. IMGT allows for even more precise radiation treatment because it uses technology that can recognize the size and shape of the tumor within the body.
What new strategies are being used to cure cancer?
New approaches to tame the immune system in the fight against cancer are getting us closer to a future where cancer becomes a curable disease. Personalized vaccines, cell therapy, gene editing and microbiome treatments are four technologies that will change the way cancer is treated.
How is AI used in cancer treatment?
Scientists have developed AI tools to aid screening tests for several kinds of cancer, including breast cancer. AI-based computer programs have been used to help doctors interpret mammograms for more than 20 years, but research in this area is quickly evolving.
How has cancer treatment improved over the years?
Treating Cancer Became More Precise With advances leading to faster and less expensive gene sequencing, precision medicine is starting to be used more often to treat patients, most notably in the treatment of lung cancer. Over the last 10 years, many researchers with ACS grants have contributed to that growth.
Which technology can help detect cancer?
There are only six imaging modalities available to clinicians who diagnose, stage, and treat human cancer: x-ray (plain film and computed tomography [CT]), ultrasound (US), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET), and optical imaging.
What technology is used in radiation?
A medical linear accelerator (LINAC) is the device most commonly used for external beam radiation treatments for patients with cancer. It delivers high-energy x-rays or electrons to the region of the patient's tumor.
What technological advancements helped treat cancer in 1950?
Nitrogen mustard compounds and other alklyating agents were among the first marketed drugs for treating cancer and are still widely used today for combating malignancies ranging from leukemias to solid tumors. Mechlorethamine is used mainly to treat Hodgkin disease and other lymphomas (MOPP regimen).
Who invented the cure for cancer?
Therapies. When Marie Curie and Pierre Curie discovered radiation at the end of the 19th century, they stumbled upon the first effective non-surgical cancer treatment.
What is the most successful treatment for cancer?
Any cancer treatment can be used as a primary treatment, but the most common primary cancer treatment for the most common types of cancer is surgery. If your cancer is particularly sensitive to radiation therapy or chemotherapy, you may receive one of those therapies as your primary treatment.
Who discovered cancer?
The origin of the word cancer is credited to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC), who is considered the “Father of Medicine.” Hippocrates used the terms carcinos and carcinoma to describe non-ulcer forming and ulcer-forming tumors.
How does math help cancer?
Mathematical and computational strategies provide a painless, fast and cost-effective way of testing different drug combination strategies, as well as other hypotheses using computational models.
What can be used to study cancer questions?
Mathematical models can be used to study these types of questions, offering the cancer biologist and clinical oncologist powerful new tools to add to their arsenal of laboratory and clinical approaches.
How does chemotherapy work for cancer?
The standard treatment for most cancers involves a combination of surgery and chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. Chemotherapy drugs have, by and large, proved effective in destroying cancer cells by preventing them from growing and dividing.
What is the second leading cause of death?
Globally, cancer is the second leading cause of death. When cancer emerges in the human body, it results in cells that are “aggressive” and able to evade the body’s growth control mechanisms. These cells are also “invasive,” entering and subsuming adjacent tissues.
Why is the lack of uniform characteristics among cellular populations important?
The lack of uniform characteristics among cellular populations has been identified as an important factor which complicates and impedes treatment response in a number of tumours.
The challenge of drug resistance
The standard treatment for most cancers involves a combination of surgery and chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.
Chemotherapy itself causes resistance
Our team is currently focused on developing a deeper understanding of how cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy drugs, leading to relapse.
Inspiring nanomedicine
We have also used mathematical modelling, integrated with experimental data, to understand the chemo-resistant characteristics of cancer cells and how they survive treatment over time.
How does math help scientists?
Math can also help scientists develop more effective treatments, Bozic says. For example, adjustments to targeted therapy, a type of cancer treatment specific to some mutations in cancer cells. Targeted therapies are drugs that target specific genes and proteins involved in the proliferation of cancer cells.
What is car T cell therapy?
She recently published a paper on CAR-T cell therapy, in which a patient’s T-cells, part of the immune system, are taken out of their body during a blood draw, engineered to better fight cancer, and then put back in their body. “Chemotherapy is usually given to patients prior to CAR-T therapy,” she explains.
Where did Bozic study bioinformatics?
Toward the end of her undergraduate studies, Bozic had an opportunity to study bioinformatics as part of an internship at the Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore.
Can cancer be predicted?
They can be analyzed using probabilistic and statistical techniques, but they can’t be precisely predicted. Cancer, Bozic says, can be seen as an evolution within our body. And like evolution, it’s not something we can see happen at the moment it’s happening.
Do mutations cause cancer?
As cells divide, their progeny collect more mutations. “Typically, several driver mutations are needed for the development of solid cancers in adults,” says Bozic. “But some leukemias and childhood cancers can be caused by a just a single mutation.”. These mutations are often stochastic, or randomly determined.
Who is the 2021 recipient of the Johnson and Johnson Scholars Award?
Professor Bozic was also selected as the 2021 Mathematics recipient in the Johnson & Johnson Scholars Award Program, an international competition which awards and sponsors women at critical points in their careers in each of the STEM2D disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing, and Design.
Can DNA sequencing reveal cancer?
In recent years, medical research has brought a surge of DNA sequencing of all kinds, including cancer sequencing. This can reveal the types of genetic mutations present in a patient’s cancer. This, along with math, can indicate how long a cancer has been developing in the body, even if it was only recently diagnosed.
Modelling Tumour Growth
Cancer is the name given to diseases which are characterised by rapid, uncontrolled cell growth. There are over 200 different types of cancer, classified by the type of cell that is initially affected. Normally, our bodies form new cells only as we need them.
Destroying Tumours by Sound
In another article we look at how it is possible to use maths to locate a whale by listening to both the sound it makes and also the echoes of that sound. In this section I will take the maths in the opposite direction, and will describe a procedure I have been involved with that uses the same ideas to help cure cancer.
What Next?
Given that so much of the real world can be modelled using mathematics, the potential applications of mathematical modelling are almost limitless. Watch this space. But always be aware of the limitations of any model.
The Challenge of Drug Resistance
Chemotherapy Itself Causes Resistance
- Our team is currently focused on developing a deeper understanding of how cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy drugs, leading to relapse. By integrating math with computational and experimental studies, we try to understand and unravel how particular combinations of drugs can help to overcome this resistance. Not all cancer cells are born equal. They compete with each ot…
Inspiring Nanomedicine
- We have also used mathematical modelling, integrated with experimental data, to understand the chemo-resistant characteristics of cancer cells and how they survive treatment over time. Using mouse models of aggressive breast cancer, we have confirmed the predictions from our mathematical model that, to overcome resistance and relapse, a lethal comb...
Modelling Tumour Growth
- Cancer is the name given to diseases which are characterised by rapid, uncontrolled cell growth. There are over 200 different types of cancer, classified by the type of cell that is initially affected. Normally, our bodies form new cells only as we need them. However, when cells acquire mutations that disrupt the tightly controlled processes of cell division and death, a tumour can g…
Destroying Tumours by Sound
- In another articlewe look at how it is possible to use maths to locate a whale by listening to both the sound it makes and also the echoes of that sound. In this section I will take the maths in the opposite direction, and will describe a procedure I have been involved with that uses the same ideas to help cure cancer. When looking for the whales w...
What Next?
- Given that so much of the real world can be modelled using mathematics, the potential applications of mathematical modelling are almost limitless. Watch this space. But always be aware of the limitations of any model.
Further Material
- Full 58 minute Gresham Lecture on YouTube – Can Maths Save The Whales and Cure Cancer?By Professor Chris Budd By Professor Chris Budd OBE, University of Bath Featured Image Image by by Colin Behrens from Pixabay Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash