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."
If this is true (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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: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.
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...
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:Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you.
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:If this is true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still early days. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I think it has: J Clin Res 2005; 8: 9-13.
Here's the abstract:
One caveat I must add is that I haven't read the full article. It seems that my institution doesn't provide online access to this journal, which might allow me to find answers to some questions:
It seems like their basic strategy is to stimulate an intense immune response locally to destroy the tumor. Can anyone explain to me why they were interested in stimulating neutrophils? According to my understanding, neutrophils are more important in the response to bacteria. Why not stimulate T cells, the effectors of cellular immunity (used primarily in fighting off viruses, cancer, TB, etc.)?