Fighting Cancer with Math 263
zoloback writes "A group of scientists have developed a mathematical method to fight certain forms of cancer. The study has taken the team several years, but the first trial on a human has been successful. You can read the actual paper. It looks like a huge advancement in science, because there's a possibility to extrapolate the method to other types of cancer" From the article: "The researchers have evidence to show that all tumors grow in the same way, irrespective of the tissue or species in which they develop. In a previous paper, these researchers reported that tumor growth, rather than being exponential as commonly believed, is a much slower "linear" process similar to the growth of certain crystals and other natural phenomena."
She cured my cancer with math (Score:4, Funny)
I'm Dancin Santa, bitch!
If this is true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
If this works, these guys deserve a world of recognition.
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
Come on; english is my second language, but "out of the box thinking" is a common expresion for someone who attacks a problem in a completely new and unthought-before way. Relax.
Re:If this is true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics (and it has nothing to Alfred Nobel's wife). [snopes.com]
But yes, the mathematicians might get a Nobel for "Physiology/Medicine". Cool! The only other Mathematician I know who has won a Nobel Prize is of course John Nash, for economics.
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
Re:If this is true (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1994/ [nobelprize.org]
That is a Nobel prize for a mathematician (The nobel prize is in economics). John Nash, for his work in game theory and its application to economy
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
Hell Yes (Score:2)
"By using a mathematical formula formula designed to strengthen the immune system, a team of scientists in Spain have succeeded in curing a patient who was in the last stage of terminal liver cancer."
A cure for cancer? By using math? Astounding! Unfortunately, the paper is rather short, and only speaks about the linear growth aspect.
Re:Hell Yes (Score:3, Funny)
This shouldn't be so astounding. After all, for many it's already cured insomnia.
Re:If this is true - unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
If there would be a real advancement behind this, many people would use it. Sad but true, but they sound like quacks.
Re:If this is true (Score:2)
Its application in medical sciences may be rare - mostly because med. people are not really fond of mathematics.
Given the background of these methods I would be suprised if this was the first time it is applied to the growth of cancer. The article seems to be well written and pretty comprehensive though, thus it is
Not really (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Actually, it cured two people... (Score:2)
I wish people would stop lying like that.
Giving Myself the Finger (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Giving Myself the Finger (Score:2, Funny)
If you want, I could forward them to you.
cheers.
A joke... (Score:5, Funny)
A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician are staying in a hotel in separate rooms. A fire breaks out in the physicist's bathroom. The physicist wakes up, sees the fire, does some calculations on his calculator, fills a cup of water, and throws it at the base of the fire putting it out while getting the rest of the bathroom hardly wet at all, and then goes back to sleep.
A fire breaks out in the engineer's bathroom later that night. The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, runs into the hallway and brings the firehose into the bathroom and lets the stream go full blast. After a minute or so, the fire is out, and the bathroom is soaking wet with water dripping everywhere, but the fire is out and the engineer goes back to bed.
A fire breaks out in the mathematician's room. The mathematician wakes up and sees the fire, does some lengthy calculations on paper, lights a match and drops it in a glass of water, says "It can be done", and goes back to bed.
Re:A joke... (Score:3, Interesting)
"The mathematician wakes up in the middle of the night, lights a match, sets the place on fire, then goes back to bed, having reduced the problem to a previously solved one."
How I fight cancer with math (Score:2)
Re:No you don't (Score:3, Funny)
Very astute observation. It's most likely your species that dictates your ability to develop aviary cancer.
Re:How I fight cancer with math (Score:2, Funny)
ovarian cancer is completely impossible without ovaries, just like it is impossible for a female to get testicular cancer.
Don't oppress me, you insensitive clod!
I have an idea. Suppose I agree that I can't actually have ovarian cancer, not having ovaries, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that I can have the right to have ovarian cancer. It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Re:A joke... (Score:5, Funny)
A mathematician doing an experiment? Never! (And yes, I am one.) The mathematician sees the fire, notices a glass of water on his nightstand, proclaims, "A solution exists!" and goes back to bed.
Cheers,
IT
A joke and maybe more (Score:2, Informative)
At the risk of trolling beyond my bounds...
It irks me to hear a good joke all the way to the end, only to find someone botched the punchline. Thank you fellow mathematician for enlightening us to the real deal.
Just so this isn't a pure fluff-post, here's a link to the abstract of the original paper from clinical studies in mice, published in Physical Review Letters, June 7, 2004. Mind you this has only been tested in one human case study and they make no claims to generalize this to other forms
Re:A joke... (Score:2, Funny)
The Physicist, the Chemist, and the Statistician
Three professors (a physicist, a chemist, and a statistician) are called in
to see their dean. Just as they arrive the dean is called out of his office,
leaving the three professors there. The professors see with alarm that there
is a fire in the wastebasket.
The physicist says, "I know what to do! We must cool down the materials
until their temperature is lower than the ignitio
Re:A joke... (Score:2)
Uh huh. Just as Chemistry is not a branch of Science.
It does remind me of a joke, though...
Against my faith. (Score:5, Funny)
You can stuff all your "evolution" and "math" voodoo. Fucking heathens!
I know it sounds funny... (Score:2)
Congratulations, America. The edge that made yo
Re:I know it sounds funny... (Score:2)
Shouldn't be against your faith... (Score:3, Funny)
Shouldn't be a problem if you're Catholic. Remember: it is perfectly acceptable for Catholics to prevent pregnancy with mathematics, though sinful to use physics or chemistry.
Cancer Crystals (Score:2, Funny)
sound methodology... (Score:5, Funny)
2. When they're not expecting it, nab 'em!
Re:sound methodology... (Score:2)
Sad part of the article (Score:2)
I find it really sad to consider that a person almost died and that the "positive outcome" is that he returned to work.
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
Hey, you reading this. You are going to die. Subtract the number 68 from your age. That's a good guess at how much time you have left, but no guarantees. What are you doing with your life between now and then? And if you have to die in the next minute, are you going to be satisfied with the way you've used your time? If not, start changing now.
Bruce
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
Damn, I'm already decades in the hole. On the bright side, someone who's 100 years old still has 32 years left!
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
First, 68 is a very low life-expectancy for a developed nation (most people reading slashdot are from developed nations) even USA (which have bad life-expectancies) are a decade better than this.
Second, that's life-expectancy *at birth*. Saying that a new-born has an expected life of 78 years is not at all the same as claiming that a 75 year old living person will on the average
Re:Sad part of the article (Score:2)
Would you have preferred it if the outcome was "The patient responded well to the treatment immediately, but was unable to regain enough of his normal life to return to work"?
3.141592654 (Score:5, Funny)
more in depth links... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://physics.about.com/b/a/088887.htm [about.com]
the blog entry that they linked to was kinda vauge on details
Re:more in depth links... (Score:2)
It's interesting that the key is to stimulate immune cells to exert mechanical pressure on the tumor cells to inhibit their growth.
How the patient was cured (Score:2)
"create a treatment based on neutrofiles that strengthened the patient's immune system. The patient responded well to the treatment immediately and has since made a total recovery and has returned to work."
So it wasn't just math. Biology also helped.
Re:How the patient was cured (Score:2)
So it wasn't just math. Biology also helped.
"Math, my dear boy, is nothing more than the lesbian sister of biology." -Peter GriffinRe:How the patient was cured (Score:2)
No cure here... (Score:3, Insightful)
As a computational biologist, I'm not knocking the usefulness of these types of mathematical approaches - and what they seem to have is a nice and maybe even a correct tumorigensis model, but let's keep it real - this is far from a cure for cancer...
Re:No cure here... (Score:2)
Just a clarification; the article says they've never observed non-linear growth in solid tumors.
I think it has to do with attack surfaces; once a tumor has metastized it has a much larger attack surface in relation to it's volume.
Not as "new" or "revolutionary" as advertised (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's great to see an advancement in science, particularly applied math, but those calling for the Nobel should take a deep breath and relax - cancer isn't going away anytime soon.
Re:Not as "new" or "revolutionary" as advertised (Score:2, Informative)
Totally agree. (Score:2)
The problem is that more people make a living from treating cancer than actually die from it. There is an insane amount of money changing hands over cancer, so no matter what new, improved, and more successful treatments pop u
Do stem cells cause cancer? (Score:2)
Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the on
Re:Not as "new" or "revolutionary" as advertised (Score:2)
Whew, thanks for clearing that up. I was starting to get worried!
Go Spain! (Score:2)
Still early days. (Score:5, Informative)
There is a follow-up article criticizing the original article: abstract [nih.gov]
And a response by the original authors: abstract [nih.gov]
In any event, it's a little premature to celebrate. Their follow-up work in mice (abstract [nih.gov]) used implanted tumours. It is already known that tumours have the capacity to evade immune response, and we should not be surprised that implanting a foreign tumour mass into a host and stimulating the immune system will provoke a favourable response. The situation is more complicated when trying to raise the immune system to attack a tumour comprised of one's own cells. It seems to me that, at this point, they are trying to prove their particular growth model, not developing a de facto cure.
That their devised strategy worked on a single human subject is cause for optimism, and nothing more. That work has not been published (that I could find), so there is no way to properly assess the result. At this point, they are more than likely drumming up press to ensure continued funding for their research... not that there's anything wrong with that ;).
Some Background... (Score:3, Informative)
Link [about.com]
And some detail on how it works...
I'm too much of a damn pessimist to believe it's true after reading something similar to this just about every week followed by "could lead to treatments"... Here's hoping I'm wrong.
Re:Some Background... (Score:2)
Well, if you are a mouse, we can cure your cancer easily..
There are problems of scaling; tumors in humans are typically much bigger than those in mice, and a mouse will die of old age before a tumor returns anyway.
But we can always hope.. Cancer survival rates are improving as new treatments come along.
bad /. headline, interesting paper (Score:4, Insightful)
On quick reading, this paper seems to argue primarily that it is not nutrients, but cell diffusion, that limits cancer growth rates. That hypothesis is supported by observing similarities between the growth behavior and shapes created by processes in that class and real tumors. Interesting, but only weak evidence. They'll need to refine their hypothesis and test it more directly experimentally.
Re:bad /. headline, interesting paper (Score:2)
The abstract to the paper makes clear they are modelling in vitro tumor growth. This is the logical place to start, but the history of cancer research is full of examples where lessons learned in glass don't translate well to life.
The specific result that tumor growth may be limited by cell diffusion rather than nutrients is particularly susceptible to this problem, as there are a few things missing in the lab, like blood vessels, that could make a significant difference in the organism.
--Tom
Well, we'll see... (Score:2, Informative)
Fight fire with fire (Score:2)
I really hope... (Score:2)
Hooray for us, we look good in our mirror! (Score:2)
A triple load:
Root cause of cancer: Do stem cells cause cancer? (Score:2)
Do stem cells cause cancer? Asks the cover of the latest (Dec. 27) issue of Forbes Magazine,
Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound impli
In normal humans (Score:2)
Re:In normal humans (Score:2)
For your information, there is a lot more to cancer than people think.
Example?
Example? Okay, cancer is like onions.
It stinks?
Yes! No!
Cancer makes you cry?
No!
You leave it out in the sun, it gets all brown and starts sprouting little white hairs.
No! Layers. Onions have layers. Cancer has layers. You get it? They both have layers.
(Apologies to Shrek)
reminds me of another joke (Score:2)
The job was given to a biologist, who after 5 years and 3 million dollars was able to produce cows who gave 5% more milk.
It wasn't enought, so they gave the job to some chemists who after 10 years and 10 million dollars created a cow who produced 15% more milk.
It still wasn't good enough, so they went to a matematician.
The guy calls them next day and says that he can easily force cows to give 50% more milk! So the farmers are running there like crazy and as
Not what I expected (Score:2)
Constipated Mathematician (Score:2)
A blog post? (Score:2)
Re:I can hear it now... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I can hear it now... (Score:2, Funny)
But in the US they would say "Nurse, quick I need 21/32nds of an ounce of..."
Re:I can hear it now... (Score:2)
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:5, Informative)
This are easily controllable factors, so instead of treating the tumor by trying to kill the cells via radio or chemical therapy, they attack the factors that (in a mathematical model) determine the growth of the tumor, turning them into negative variables and therefore extinguishing the mass
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately some of the most promising drugs that work to shrink tumors are not improving survival rates whatsoever. They are, in fact, shrinking the tumors "like they're supposed to", but this isn't doing anything to stop progression of the cancer
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:3, Funny)
could someone explain it to me?
It's simple, really. The cancer can't survive if the host organism is dead. Therefore scientists have proposed boring cancer sufferers to death with complex mathematical proofs, hence killing the cancerous cells and preventing the patient from having to suffer the horrible death that cancer brings.
It is not the point that the boring mathematical proofs are a more painful death that the years of suffering at the hands of cancer and conventional treatments.
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:2)
Hey, it's better than reading them poetry, right?
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:2)
Sigh. It'
Re:Could they elaborate a bit? (Score:2)
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
To the poster, contributors, and Slashdot creators alike: thanks.
Oh, and the users are sometimes OK, too.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you.
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
There's just no easy Slashdot-like 'subscribe' option for supporting cancer research or I'd do that, too.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Interesting Application of Math (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sinple math (Score:2)
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:5, Informative)
Cancer is an anomaly of mitosis; it is not an organism and therefore does not evolve. The body regularly squashes cells which go into a sort-of mitotic infinite loop, and that's the end of that. It's the ones that the immune system does not recognize that grow into tumors.
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
in short,
(1) they reproduce
(2) they are susceptible to changes
==> (3) they evolve
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Interestingly, in dogs, there is an extremely common
Cancer is evolution (Score:2, Informative)
Each of these mutations is selected for by very stringent competition for nutrients both among cancer cells them
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
There should be no marked increase in the number of odd cases which do not grow in this manner , though since the other varieties should decrease they should account for a larger percentage of total cases of cancer.
The "nature and better mouse" argument does hold that if we cure cancer something else w
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
The problem is that the mitosis is not controlled by the factors normally controlling mitosis (a chemical signal "please mitose") but for some reason the cells
-> ignore the signal and divide away
-> produce the signal themselves
cheers,
Christophe
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
First of all evolution does not require life to exist, it's simply the phenomenon that if you have a system where two opposite tendencies are at work, such as the tendency for complexity to form and the tendency for these complexities to break down, the complexities that are least likely to break down will survive - that's "survival of the fittest"
Secondly, an organism is simply an aggregation of cells (typically) that work together because it improves their chance of survival, lo
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Every time? What about polio, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus?
Re:Nature is nothing if not clever (Score:2)
Plus, you argument makes no sense:
The cancer cells are your cells, if they did mutate somehow, it wouldn't make any effect on anyone else
Cancer cells are just human cells anyway, and you have a certain amount of cancer susceptable oncogenes, and cancer-preventing oncosu
Re:Nothing? (Score:2)
Maybe if it's Ben Kenobi who says so.
"These aren't the cells you're looking for. Move along." (waves hand)
Re:An outline of the proof (Score:2)
In America, that shouldn't be too hard to find.