Cancer deaths per capita have decreased in recent years, but the improvement is attributed to prevention, not treatment. The difficulty in treating cancer may be due to its "complexity", in the mathematical physics sense of the word. Tumors evolve and spread in response to internal and external factors that involve feedback mechanisms and nonlinear behavior. Investigations of the nonlinear interactions among cells, and between cells and their environment, are crucial for developing a sufficiently detailed understanding of the system's emergent phenomenology to be able to control the behavior. In the case of cancer, controlling the system's behavior will mean the ability to treat and cure the disease. Physicists have been studying various complex, nonlinear systems for many years using a variety of techniques. These investigations have provided insights that allow physicists to make unique contributions towards the treatment of cancer.
This interdisciplinary book presents recent advancements in physicists' research on cancer. The work presented in this volume uses a variety of physical, biochemical, mathematical, theoretical, and computational techniques to gain a deeper molecular and cellular understanding of the horrific disease that is cancer.
Sample Chapter(s)
Preface
Chapter 1 - Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analyses Methods for Agent-Based Mathematical Models: An Introductory Review
Contents:
- Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analyses Methods for Agent-Based Mathematical Models: An Introductory Review (Sara Hamis, Stanislav Stratiev and Gibin G Powathil)
- Game Theory Cancer Models of Cancer Cell–Stromal Cell Dynamics Using Interacting Particle Systems (Yinan Zheng, Yusha Sun, Gonzalo Torga, Kenneth Pienta and Robert Austin)
- Occupancy and Fractal Dimension Analyses of the Spatial Distribution of Cytotoxic (CD8+) T Cells Infiltrating the Tumor Microenvironment in Triple Negative Breast Cancer (Juliana C Wortman, Ting-Fang He, Anthony Rosario, Roger Wang, Daniel Schmolze, Yuan Yuan, Susan E Yost, Xuefei Li, Herbert Levine, Gurinder Atwal, Peter Lee and Clare C Yu)
- Cooperation Among Tumor Cell Subpopulations Leads to Intratumor Heterogeneity (Xin Li and D Thirumalai)
- Cell Mechanics Drives Migration Modes (Claudia Tanja Mierke)
- Physics of the Extracellular Matrix and Biology of Tumors — A Close Relationship (Hanna Engelke)
- Computational Modeling and Experimental Investigations to Enhance the Successful Response of Anti-PD-1 Cancer Immunotherapies (Damijan Valentinuzzi, Katja Uršič, Matea Maruna, Simon Buček, Urban Simončič, Martina Vrankar, Maja Čemažar, Gregor Serša and Robert Jeraj)
- The Physical Microenvironment of Tumors: Characterization and Clinical Impact (Matthew R Zanotelli, Neil C Chada, C Andrew Johnson and Cynthia A Reinhart-King)
- The Architecture of Co-Culture Spheroids Regulates Tumor Invasion Within a 3D Extracellular Matrix (Matthew R Zanotelli, Neil C Chada, C Andrew Johnson and Cynthia A Reinhart-King)
- Investigations of Interactions Between Altretamine and Model Membranes: Spectroscopic and Calorimetric Analysis (D Bilge, N Civelek and Z Özçelik Çetinel)
- Kinetic Aspects of the Interplay of Cancer and the Immune System (Vladimir P Zhdanov)
- Comparison of the Atavistic Model of Cancer to Somatic Mutation Theory: Phylostratigraphic Analyses Support the Atavistic Model (Charles H Lineweaver and Paul C W Davies)
Readership: Cancer researchers, biophysicists, computational biologists, scientists with an interest in cancer research.
Professor Bernard S Gerstman, PhD is Professor of Physics at Florida International University. His research speciality is in theoretical and computational molecular and cellular biophysics. After receiving his PhD from the Physics Department at Princeton University, Prof. Gerstman moved to a post-doctoral position at The University of Virginia. He then accepted an assistant professor position at Florida International University. He has recently served two terms as Chair of the Physics Department at FIU. He has also been an Executive Editor for the American Institute of Physics, and Editor-In-Chief for the Springer-Nature book series, Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering.