Ramone’s Benefit at Hollywood Forever (Proceeds go to WCC and CAMM!)
David Agus sent word that there will be a special Halloween / Ramone’s Benefit for our cancer research center. The proceeds will benefit the Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine.
(Click on the picture to zoom in)
Drop in if you’re in the Los Angeles area–it should be a lot of fun, and the proceeds will help our research towards patient-calibrated cancer modeling!
ACP paper accepted
After a few years of work, our big DCIS paper has been accepted at Analytical Cell Pathology. I’ll post a preprint soon on the publications page. Major points:
- We used my agent model calibration technique, plus a volume-averaging upscaling to calibrate a simplified continuum model of DCIS growth in the breast.
- We used the steady-state approximation of the continuum model to estimate the DCIS volume.
- We applied this technique to 17 cases and found a very good match in predicted vs. pathology volume in 14 of 17 cases.
- We also found that the model was a much better predictor of volume than mammographic estimates (although this can vary with how the mammography is processed).
- We found that the mathematical theory predicted that a single variable A–a ratio of the apoptotic index, the proliferative index, and the estimated intraductal oxygenation–is a better predictor of tumor volume than grade, PI, or AI alone.
The last finding is significant, because you can AI and PI from fairly standard immunohistochemical stains (cleaved Caspase-3 and Ki-67), and oxygenation can be estimated from histopathologic measurements of the viable rim size when comedonecrosis is present. These things can likely be done on pre-operative biopsy tissue.
In the long term, this could prove useful for improved surgical planning. Right now, second surgeries are required in 50% or more DCIS lumpectomies due to inadequate pre-surgical estimates of tumor shape and volume.
More to come when I post the preprint tonight or tomorrow.
Edit on Sept. 8, 2011 at 11:22 am PDT:
Preprint is now online:
http://www.mathcancer.org/publications/edgerton11_ACP(preprint).pdf
Edit on Sept. 8, 2011 at 11:22 am PDT:
Preprint is now online:
http://www.mathcancer.org/publications/edgerton11_ACP(preprint).pdf
For older news posts …
For older news posts through July 2011, please see my archived news [MathCancer.org].
All new news will be posted here on blogger.