SXC.HU, HISKSCancer is a dynamic, adaptive system consisting of billions of normal and tumor cells interacting at multiple spatial and temporal scales. To many cancer biologists and oncologists, the complexity of cancer seems beyond comprehension. So it is not surprising that attempts to develop mathematical models of cancer and therapies have typically been dismissed. Cancer, it would appear to some, is too complicated to model. But this bias ignores an increasingly mundane component of modern life—weather forecasts. By using sophisticated computational models to integrate large, continuously updated datasets organized with the fundamental laws of physics, meteorologists can characterize complex weather systems sufficiently well to accurately predict their behavior.
In 2008, our institution, Moffitt Cancer Center, eschewed the conventional wisdom and formed the department of integrated mathematical oncology (IMO). The applied mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists who make up the IMO are expected to collaborate with cancer biologists and oncologists to examine cancer as an evolving complex, dynamical system. The goal is not to do new mathematics, but to use mathematics as a tool to do new biology. IMO brings a fresh perspective that focuses on identifying key principles and parameters of a given cancer rather than the more traditional reductionist view of ever more detailed investigation of its component parts. We hold an annual five-day competition in which four teams—each made up of clinical, experimental, and theoretical members—are charged with solving a cancer ...
