USC Physical Sciences in Oncology Center Monthly Seminar Series

Friday, May 18, 2012 : 11:45am to 1:00pm

Health Sciences Campus
Clinical Sciences Building
Harkness Auditorium #250

Free


USC was selected to establish a $16 million cancer research center as part of a new strategy against the disease by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute. As part of the outreach component of this grant, the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine is hosting a monthly seminar series.

A lecture by Dr. Paul Macklin, Associate Professor, Department of Research Medicine, University of Southern California.

From Dr. Macklin: "Current clinical oncology practice can generate a wide variety of data for patients. Radiology is used both to detect and plan surgical excisions. Immunostains performed on pre-surgical biopsies are used to diagnose (and grade) the cancers and select therapeutic agents. Molecular profiling may also help stratify patients and select
therapeutic agents. However, there is currently no technique to quantitatively combine these diverse data sources, along with novel in vitro measurements, to improve surgical and therapeutic planning.

In this talk, we will discuss efforts by my lab (MathCancer.org) and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine to solve this issue. We will focus on developing and calibrating biologically-grounded computational models to individual patients (particularly ductal carcinoma in situ), encouraging (and validated!) results in quantitatively predicting
clinical progression, the implications for making and quantitatively testing biological hypotheses, and the role of mathematical modeling in facilitating a deeper understanding of biology, pathology, and radiology. We anticipate that such efforts will play an increasing role
in driving experimental cell biology, testing and challenging current cancer biology orthodoxy, and ultimately improving clinical care."