Mathematician and surgeon awarded £20,000 for collaborative cancer research

Cancer Research UK have awarded £20,000 to final year mathematics PhD student, Heiko Enderling, for his joint research project with consultant surgeon, Dr Jayant S Vaidya, to develop mathematical models of tumours under radiation therapy.

The research, which will focus on mathematical models of radiotherapy used to treat early breast cancer, will help to predict the outcomes of treatment and determine which types of therapy are most effective.

Heiko Enderling is currently in the final year of his PhD in the Division of Mathematics supervised by Dr Alexander Anderson and Professor Mark Chaplain. This project focuses on both the modelling and visualisation of various aspects of tumour growth and treatment. More recently, his research has focussed on how exposure to radiation affects tumour cells and normal (uncancerous) tissue.

Dr Vaidya, who joined Ninewells Hospital in October last year, has developed a new approach for radiotherapy, called Targit, which boosts its effectiveness and means that only a targeted single dose of radiation is given during surgery. This treatment is currently undergoing international, randomized clinical trials with final results expected in 2009.

Already collaboration between Mr Enderling, Professor Chaplain and Dr Anderson in the Division of Mathematics, and Dr Vaidya and Professor Alastair Munro in Surgery and Molecular Oncology, has resulted in a joint publication which demonstrates the power of mathematical modelling in predicting the outcome of treatments with standard radiotherapy and the new Targit approach.

The £20,000 grant from Cancer Research UK will fund an eight month project to further develop the mathematical models - a useful tool for simulating different treatment scenarios on theoretical patients before applying them on actual patients.

These models work by representing each piece of the biological system as a separate component, each of which can be expressed by a mathematical equation. For example, different equations describe the behaviour of both normal and cancer cells as well their interaction.

By applying radiation to the cells mathematically, it is possible to predict what the likely impact on the cells will be - will they cease growing, or die, or will they continue to multiply?

In this manner the researchers are able to analyse how effective different types of radiation therapy are likely to be.

Illustration showing how a mathematical model predicts the growth and invasion of a tumour (red) within a breast with different internal structures, such as the breast ducts (blue) as time increases (left to right).