turkmath.org

Cancer, one of the leading causes of death for humans, is characterized as abnormal growth of cells, called tumors. There is a myriad of treatments developed to eradicate the tumor, or help the immune system fight the tumor. One of the treatments is the relatively new immunotherapy –utilizing the adaptive immune response of the body to fight the tumor cells. In this talk we will present a mathematical model for a cancer vaccine, a type of immunotherapy, where the goal is to boost the patient’s immune response to tumor cells. The second part of the talk will be devoted to the mathematical model for the stem cell hypothesis, which states that cancerous stem cells are the reason that tumors grow and persist, and proposes targeting treatments towards the cancerous stem cells instead of, or in addition to, the standard tumor cells. This is a groundbreaking theory and one that can alter the existing cancer treatment protocols and methods, favoring immunotherapy.