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Month: March 2016
On growth and shape in nature: Mathematical approaches to morphogenesis
Speech held during the Diderot Mathematical forum 2016: Biomedical Applications of Mathematics
Mathematics has become more and more important for various areas of the biological sciences due to the increasing availability of data and new data sources. In fact, the new investigation techniques and the need to organize and interpret an enormous amount of data and biological information deeply require the involvement of mathematics, including computational and statistical methods, both in biological and biomedical research and in the understanding of the medical problems (diagnosis, epidemiology, clinical medicine, …). Moreover, analysis and numerical simulation of mathematical models in the broader life sciences are emerging as a further investigative tool to be attached to other experimental or theoretical methods. Among the advantages that a mathematical model in biology or medicine could have we can remember: predict the evolution of a biological system under different conditions without redoing experiences or in situations which are not experimentally verifiable; quantitatively validate biological hypotheses; investigate properties of biological materials; suggest experiments; highlight links between various underlying biological entities through the analysis of experimental data and any underlying phenomena. Apart from this it must be remembered the contribution of mathematics to the development of the methods of investigation, for instance the methods of reconstruction and visualization of medical images for non-invasive techniques (CT, computerized tomography, or MRI, Magnetic Resonance.Here are some biomedical areas in which mathematics is nowadays widely used: Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Science omics (genomics, proteomics, pharmacogenomics, …), Mathematical modeling, Analysis of signals and biomedical images.
Personalize nanoparticles to target tumours
From Medical Physics Web
http://medicalphysicsweb.org/cws/article/research/64402
Nanoparticles can be used to treat cancer, but a “one size fits all” method is far from ideal, say researchers from the universities of Toronto and Calgary in Canada and the University Health Network in Toronto. Instead, the size, shape and composition of the particles need to be tailored to the biological and physical properties of a tumour, which can vary from patient to patient and the stage at which a tumour is at (PNAS 113 E1142).
“We are introducing here the idea of personalized nanomedicine,” explains team leader Warren Chan in Toronto.
Nanotechnology is promising for delivering drugs and treating cancer, and nanomaterials can be fabricated with different sizes, shapes and surface chemistries as well as designed with unique properties. For instance, they can be engineered to emit light so that they can be detected by fluorescence imaging; to be magnetic for MRI; and to emit heat so that they can destroy cancer cells photothermally. However, despite their potential, less than 5% of an administered dose of nanoparticles actually reaches a tumour site because the materials either do not remain in the tumour for long enough and leak out, or because they are preferentially taken up by organs like the skin, spleen and liver.
Account for tumour properties
Changing the size, shape and surface chemistry has improved the tumour-targeting efficiency of many nanomaterials. But Chan and colleagues say that present-day nanomedicine is wrongly adhering to an ideology that nanoparticles and other nano-agents should have a “universal” design, regardless of the type or stage of a cancer they are meant to treat. “A tumour is a pretty complex structure and has different biological properties depending on the type of tumour, its size and how mature it is. These properties can in fact become barriers to nanoparticle transport and retention in the tumour.”
One example of a tumour’s property is its porosity: if the pores in a tumour are smaller than the size of the nanoparticles administered, the particles cannot enter and move within the tumour. “A tumour is also heterogeneous and this heterogeneity affects and/or prevents chemotherapeutic drugs from reaching it,” explains Chan.
“If nanoparticles could instead be tailored according to the physiological state of each individual tumour, cancer detection and treatment might be drastically improved,” he tells our sister site nanotechweb.org.
Tumour biology is equally important
In their experiments on mice with breast and prostate tumours, the researchers studied how methoxy-PEG-coated spherical gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) entered tumours of varying volumes and sizes and how long the particles remained at the different tumour sites. They also studied how AuNPs with different diameters (15, 30, 45, 60, and 100 nm) were taken up in a tumour. The particles were tracked thanks to fluorescent labels.
The researchers say that tumour biology is equally important as nanoparticle size when it comes to determining how efficient a nanoparticle is for treating a tumour. By thoroughly assessing the composition of different types of tumours, the team has also succeeded in developing a simple algorithm to rationally select the best AuNP composition/shape for treating individual tumours – taking their size, and how mature they are, into account.
For more on the latest developments in the application of physical sciences in cancer research, visit the journal Convergent Science Physical Oncology.
Computational approaches for advancing cancer genomic medicine
Ken Chen, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Director of Bioinformatics, Institute of Personalized Cancer Therapy
MD Anderson Cancer Center
Physics & Mathematics in Biomedicine Consortium 