Vito Quaranta clicks on a small black dot on his computer screen. The dot – which represents about a thousand cancer cells – begins to “grow,” morphing into a mass with finger-like projections that looks like an invasive tumor. The Vanderbilt professor of cancer biology envisions a future when computer simulations like this will be used to predict a tumor’s clinical progression and formulate individualized treatment plans. For the last two years, he has headed a major effort to develop the kind of mathematical model for cancer invasion powerful enough for this purpose. The result was published as an entirely theoretical paper in the journal Cell and, if he is right, it represents a “sea change” in how biology is done. >>> Discuss This Story
