Chalmers Conferences, 9th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology

Out with the new, in with the old
David Basanta, Arturo Araujo, Color Lynch, Leah Cook, Shilpa Gupta, Jasreman Dhillon, Jong Park, Julio Pow Sang

Last modified: 2014-06-09

Abstract


Prostate cancer is a major burden to health care systems across the world. It is one of the most common diagnosed cancer in men and the second most common cause of male cancer death in the US. In 90% of the cases, patients dying of prostate cancer complications show evidence of bone metastases. While novel treatments are constantly being developed, almost all patients ago through a sequence of treatments that include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery and hormonal therapy. The order and timing of these treatments hardly ever changes and has been shaped more by craft than by science. Given the pace at which new treatments are developed and tested in clinical trials, new approaches that could utilize existing treatments in novel ways could have a substantial and immediate impact in the clinic at minimal cost. Mathematical modeling can be the glue where known biological mechanisms can be incorporated into optimization algorithms to find out how to better use existing drugs and how to better sequence their application so as to minimize tumor burden. These approaches can be used not only with existing treatments but also with new targeted therapies. In this talk I will present two different projects where we address precisely this challenge with the use of genetic algorithms and agent based modeling.