STEVE HADDOCK ‘88 USED COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS TO FIND THE PHOTOPROTEIN THAT HELPS THIS DEEP-SEA CTENOPHORE MAKE LIGHT.
to assemble, assembling the sequences and then doing diagnos- tics on the assembly.” By translating their questions into mathematical language
and then encoding it into a computer program, researchers can build models to predict outcomes or identify potential causes of observed phenomena. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for ex-
ample, uses mathematical models to determine how a disease might spread in a given population and how to potentially stop or minimize its spread. Cancer researchers use models to explore potential ways to treat or prevent various cancers. In fact, according to a study published last August in the
Annals of Internal Medicine, a risk-prediction model devel- oped at the University of Liverpool’s Cancer Research Center proved more accurate at determining a person’s lung cancer risk than assessments based upon family history or years of smoking. Harvey Mudd College mathematics Professor Lisette de
Pillis, an expert in the fi eld of tumor modeling, uses math- ematical models to defi ne variables involved in tumor growth rates and to identify the effects of the immune system and drug therapies in treating cancer patients. One day, she was asked to work with a data set from a
breast cancer patient whose treatment response puzzled her physicians. “They would measure her tumor before and after each treatment, and what they expected to see was treatment, tumor shrinks, treatment again and tumor shrinks some
more,” says de Pillis. “But what they saw was treatment, tumor shrinks, treatment again and tumor grows. The overall trend was that her tumor would shrink, but why would it grow im- mediately after treatment?” With her collaborators, she created a model that offered a
possible explanation. By accounting for the action of the im- mune system, it showed that the chemotherapy might not only be damaging the tumor but also harming the immune system that kept the tumor in check so that, in some cases, the tumor was allowed to grow. “That model did not say it defi nitely is the immune system; it said this is one possible mechanism. To confi rm that, we would have to develop some assays and check our results in the lab,” she says. A core group member of the newly formed Brain Tumor
Ecology Collaborative—a joint, three-year project by Wash- ington University, Columbia University, U.C. San Diego and HMC—de Pillis will be at the forefront of research to better understand the behavior of pediatric brain and spine tumors called gliomas. Her role will include using mathematical models to test
hypotheses about what natural elements in the body might lead to the growth or the control of these tumors. “Right now, we are working to determine distinguishing
features of these cancers, such as the number of mitochondria per cell or the expression of the NF1 gene, that may infl uence tumor formation. The collaborative wants to use models to look at the physical space in which the cells live, to see how
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Har vey Mudd College SPRING 2013
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