Mathematical model that predicts tumor growth!

Medical News Today: The aggressiveness of cancer tumours may be determined by the tissue environment in which they grow new research from the University of Dundee shows.

Dr Sandy Anderson, of the Division of Mathematics at Dundee, has developed a mathematical model - similar in concept to weather forecasting but considerably more complex - which predicts how tumours grow and invade tissue. The results produced by the model have given startling insights into how cancerous tumours develop in the body.

"What this model predicts is that the more barren and harsh the tissue environment surrounding it is, the more aggressive the tumour becomes," said Dr Anderson.The findings have the potential to impact on how certain cancers are treated, by forcing the environment around the tumour to be considered as a contributory factor in how aggressive the cancer is.

The combination of maths and laboratory research to develop such models has been hailed as a "new era in cancer research" by Professor Vito Quaranta, a leading American cancer biologist who is collaborating on the project.

Professor Quaranta envisions a future when computer simulations like this will be used to predict a tumour's clinical progression and formulate treatment plans, in a fashion not dissimilar to how we forecast the weather now.

"Today we can know pretty well that for the next few days we're going to expect good weather or that there's a storm on the way," said Professor Quaranta. "That's the kind of predictive power we want to generate with our model for cancer invasion."Dr Anderson's research is published in the scientific journal Cell today, December 1st 2006, and is one of the few purely mathematical modeling papers to appear in the history of this prestigious biological journal.

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