"For mathematicians, all problems in the world are mathematical problems, and all phenomena in daily life can be explained by mathematics, I am a doctor, but I used to love mathematics, and I think that mathematics can be used to treat diseases, even cancer."

Christine Kyle was talking eloquently, her face full of confidence, and even this group of old experts and old otaku had to secretly boast 'Cool!'

In fact, she's really cool at her job, the head of the Cancer Research Unit at the Royal Swedish Academy of Medicine, and she's doing something different -- it's using mathematics to study cancer.

"Is there math to cure diseases? Did I hear me right? Am I crazy or is this woman crazy?"

"Do you want to throw out the mathematical omnipotence theory again? Whose conjecture is it this time?"

"Forget it, for the sake of Dong Chou and the Zhou Group, let's listen to what she has to say. ”

Needless to say, Ye Decao, Zhang Gongzi, Cheng Dazui, and Wei Minghe, who are the first-class experts and scholars in China, can join the project team, which one is not a well-known figure in the medical field? And all of them have more than ten years or even decades of experience in cancer research. Generally speaking, if there is a breakthrough or a new theory in cancer research in the world's medical community, they will know at the first time that Kyle is still very well established in the field of cancer research before burying his head into her 'mathematical treatment theory', and some experts have heard her name; Kyle is going to be disappointed this time, since she started the theoretical research on the treatment of cancer by mathematics, even in Europe, she has been laughed at by many so-called mainstream scholars, and has gradually ceased to be concerned by the world's medical community, and some research results are difficult to see in influential medical journals.

looked at the audience or snickering, or disdainful peers. Christine Kyle straightened her chest, making the already towering front even more erect.

She had her persistence, and in 21 years, her father died of lung cancer while she was a graduate student in the Department of Applied Mathematics. It was an unusually difficult time. Her father was an engineer, and all her knowledge and hobbies about mathematics came from his father, who played math games with her when she was a child, and cultivated her habit of thinking about quantifying everything. After her father's death, she chose to go to medical school, where she studied mathematical biology. He studied under Ellsworth Alward, a renowned professor of neuropathology, specializing in brain cancer. The reason why she didn't choose to start with lung cancer was because cancer was too difficult for her to face, and her two brothers also died of lung cancer inexplicably, which was like a family stop, so that when she dreamed back at midnight, she would always break out in a cold sweat.

Mathematics may not explain fate, but at least it can explain cancer, on this. She was convinced.

"A naïve researcher with a crazy desire to save the world, hoping to use mathematics to solve the world's biggest problem. She once said to her supporters with a smile, "I was poured cold water on it." Even today. If you say that cancer is manageable and predictable, you will still encounter skepticism and even ridicule. This suspicion is reasonable, the mechanism of cancer initiation and metastasis is so complex, how can so much molecular data be reduced to a few mathematical formulas? But I have to do it!"

Recently. Christine Kyle has published an article in a small Swedish medical journal Cell, exploring what went wrong in the human war on cancer.

She concluded that one cancer cell is smarter than 100 top cancer specialists. As humans learn more about cancer. The more you discover, the more complicated it is than expected. They invade the immune system, travel through blood vessels, colonize distant organs, and recruit normal cells to support their rebellion......

Research in molecular biology has uncovered more than 25,000 genetic variants associated with cancer, and the number is growing. A recent study by Johns Hopkins University in the United States showed that pancreatic cancer alone involves 1,007 different genetic variants. In addition, the growth of cancer cells is also affected by the surrounding blood supply, nutrition, and immune system status.

From the perspective of "war", the participation of mathematicians is undoubtedly a powerful foreign aid. In fact, 50 years ago, mathematicians tried to explain cancer mathematically, but decades later, such research tried to enter the mainstream medical field from obscure academic journals, and finally when the biological data of cancer piled up at an alarming rate, and the entire medical community urgently needed quantitative tools to organize and analyze the data, Christine Kyle knew that her opportunity had come.

"Research across cancer is now focused on the molecular biology level: genes, intracellular signaling pathways, and, more recently, microRNAs. The financial resources of the whole country, and indeed the world, are focused on small genetic mutations. The question is, how do we relate this data and information at the micro level to a specific patient's tumor?"

Christine Kyle gently pushed her gold-rimmed glasses, her proud figure, delicate face and nearly forty years old can still be called a 'devil', so that these old otaku unconsciously stopped talking and laughing, and looked up at her a little stunned, I have to say, this is a very attractive intellectual beauty, and the theory she put forward seems to be quite attractive; of course, if the stage is replaced by an old man like Ye Decao and a guy with a big mouth, everyone is not in the mood to understand the so-called mathematical method.

"They finally listened patiently, my personal beautician was right, a woman can make a lot easier when she shows her charm properly"

Thinking of this, Christine Kyle glanced at Zhou Yi in the audience, and suddenly had an inexplicable interest in the chairman of the Zhou Group and the discoverer of the cancer factor, but this careful thought was quickly diluted by the serious atmosphere in front of her, she took a deep breath and began to sort out what she wanted to express, there is only one chance, she must conquer the young chairman and the old guys of these project teams, let them agree with their research results, so that the results can be inserted into this project team.

"Using mathematics to treat cancer may sound incredible, so let's choose an angle of entry that everyone can accept."

Christine Kyle gave all the experts in the room a very affirmative, confident, and conquering gaze, like a towering queen giving a speech to her people: "My idea is to go beyond the molecular level and start from the perspective of clinical imaging, after all, this is the most common and visual monitoring method used by doctors, and it directly affects the diagnosis and treatment process of patients."

"The current problem with clinical imaging is: It does not detect all tumors, and many cancer cells are hidden under the surface of the water, which means that doctors lose a lot of information when understanding a patient's tumor, and not only can surgery not remove all tumors, but other treatment options are also limited. So, I wanted to design a model that would allow the doctor to see what was going on "below the depths". Of course, it's a mathematical model."

It's always the hardest to start with, but when you get into the groove. She as a speaker and an audience soon entered her mathematical world together.

Christine Kyle's focus is on cranial glioma. This is the most common type of brain tumor, and it is also the most dangerous because it is highly diffuse. It is like a slowly outstretched hand in the brain, and when it is diagnosed, it is often accompanied by hundreds of genetic mutations, and clinical imaging testing instruments such as MRI (nuclear magnetic resonance) can only reveal the tip of the iceberg, and 99.9% of cancer cells cannot be displayed.

This kind of brain tumor is not contradictory to the 'theory of the immortality of the human brain' that Zeng Ming insisted on, and Zeng Ming's so-called human brain is actually not a physical brain. It is an abstract human brain that contains the concepts of spirit and soul, but despite this, her speech also made Zeng Ming very interested and listened very carefully.

Her model is actually a set of partial differential equations. Based on a patient's MRI history, calculating the rate at which cancer cells divide and spread in the brain tissue and simulating its spread path can not only show the current true distribution of cancer cells in the skull (including the parts that are not visible on MRI). It can also calculate where and how fast it is most likely to invade next.

It accurately predicts how long a patient will live, rather than giving a general "median survival" and, more importantly, more importantly. It predicts a patient's response to radiotherapy and how well it will respond. Under the current standard procedure, a brain cancer patient must receive brain radiation therapy once every six weeks, which is often accompanied by serious side effects, but her model shows that some patients with slow tumor progression can achieve the same effect by reducing the number of radiation treatments, while some patients with faster tumor progression are suitable for low-dose radiation therapy two or three times a day to improve survival.

Another benefit of this model is that it allows patients to avoid trying risky, hopeless, and expensive surgeries. Brain surgery carries a high level of risk and can lead to paralysis that affects vision or the ability to speak. Sometimes, no treatment is the best treatment that can save a lot of unnecessary suffering.

For a cancer patient, a standardized treatment plan is a cruel and desperate choice. They often have to take many detours to find the right treatment plan, and by the time they do, they probably don't have much time, on the contrary, if they don't waste this time, the patient may be able to do something more interesting, enjoy life, enjoy food, enjoy family affection

This is the reality of medicine today - it has never existed for the individual. But Christine Kyle's mathematical model proves that personalized treatment does not have to wait for scientists to decipher all the genetic code before it can be launched, and with current technology, although it is difficult to cure cancer, it can at least maximize the efficacy and reduce the harm to patients. And the establishment of this mathematical model can help cancer researchers achieve the goal of overcoming cancer more efficiently, such as the experts and scholars in the audience who were red-faced just now because of the 'route' dispute, but are listening carefully to her speech at the moment, whether they are paying attention to her research results or towering chests, Christine Kyle thinks it is a success.

"If you look at the patient as a whole, you will find that everything is irregular, and the same cancer can grow and spread in completely different patterns in different patients. However, from an individual point of view, in fact, the growth and spread patterns of cancer cells in each patient are traceable, which can greatly reduce the difficulty of our cancer overcome. ”

Turning on the laptop and plugging in the projector, Christine Kyle began to present her research results. In fact, her mathematical model is so concise that it has only two key parameters, but its predictions are surprisingly accurate, validated in more than 1,350 patients.

"Mathematics has amazing predictive powers. ”

Christine Kyle strives to make her voice more feminine, delighting these old guys while gaining more time and opportunity to promote her research: "Let's imagine the weather forecast. If in the future there is such a model. As long as a patient's data is entered, whether it is MRI or genetic test results, it will automatically analyze the behavior pattern of the tumor, simulate how the tumor grows, spreads, and metastasizes, predicts the patient's prognosis, and calculates the best drug combination and treatment plan. By then, 1,000 patients will have 1,000 different treatment options. We will be able to completely abandon the stereotyped, rigid treatment formulas, which, in fact, have never been scientifically deficient. "Also, I have a bold idea. If people can accept my research results, maybe it will reduce the controversy and make the school of thought fight invisible in the face of great mathematics?"

Christine Kyle's Huaxia essay is really great, hearing this, even Zhou Yi nodded unconsciously, Cheng Dong is very capable, this female medical scientist appeared too timely.

Christine Kyle's proposal is not just a beautiful idea. In fact, some mathematical models have provided possible answers, and even solutions, to some practical problems that have plagued doctors for years. Like what. Researchers at the University of Virginia in the United States have used genetic analysis of cancer to design a mathematical model to predict the effectiveness of the same chemotherapy drug for different patients, with an accuracy of up to 85 percent. This model has been validated in bladder and breast cancer and has the potential to be applicable to all cancer types. It will soon enter clinical trials.

When doctors are confronted with a patient with early-stage cancer, the first question is often this: how aggressive are the cancer cells? Is there a high probability of metastasis? Does the patient need aggressive treatment, or is it a milder approach? MRI and CT scans can show the size and shape of the tumor, but they cannot accurately estimate its potential aggressiveness. Mathematical model discovery by Professor Vito of Vanderbilt University in the United States. The aggressiveness of cancer cells is not only in the genetic variation itself, but also in the surrounding microenvironment that determines its composition and aggressiveness, as long as one of these variables is changed. For example, the oxygen content can adjust the aggressiveness of the tumor.

The "nonlinear scheduling algorithm" (a "optimization algorithm" that seeks the highest efficiency among thousands of variables and constraints) proposed by Ukrainian mathematician Roman 25 years ago was recently used by German researcher Lenbert to calculate the angle, intensity, and duration of radiotherapy rays to destroy tumors with maximum efficiency without harming marginal healthy tissue. This system is already being used in the radiotherapy departments of several hospitals in Germany.

Even more exciting is the chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) model by Doron Levy, a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Maryland. CML is the simplest cancer because it involves only a single genetic variant. In 2001, after the invention of a targeted drug called "Gleevec", the 5-year survival rate of patients with chronic leukemia increased from 50% to 95%. But the problem is that patients have to rely on Gleevec for a long time, and once the drug is stopped, the number of cancer cells in the blood returns to pre-treatment levels, or even higher. Once a patient becomes resistant to Gleevec, the situation becomes dire.

Professor Doron Levy's model basically allows the patient's immune system to replace Gleevec to fight cancer cells, thus getting rid of Gleevec's dependence. He spent 4 years tracking and analyzing the immune response status of CML patients while taking Gleevec. In the end, he found that when the patient was first diagnosed, the patient's immune system was very weak, but once he started taking Gleevec, the anti-leukemia immune response in the patient's body continued to increase, reaching a peak and then slowly declining. During this time, the cancer cells are still present, but in relatively small quantities, causing the immune system to become less vigilant. At this time, a simple cancer vaccine (the patient's blood at the beginning of diagnosis, which kills the cancer cells in it and then infuses it back into the patient's body) can reactivate the immune system. The key to this model is to calculate the best time for the patient to get the vaccine, and the immunotherapy regimen guided by it is likely to eventually cure the leukemia.

Of course, none of these achievements have entered the field of vision of the mainstream medical community, and even Zhou Yi has a certain understanding after reading the information brought by Christine Kyle. The experts and scholars present, even including the awesome characters such as the senior brother Ye Decao and Cheng Dazui Cheng General, all listened to it with straight eyes, and they were almost conquered by her.

There are a thousand treatments for a thousand patients? So what are we fighting for, aren't they all children playing at home, and it's naïve to play around? It's too hurtful to self-esteem, but I have to admit that this woman not only has big breasts, but also has a high IQ!

Standing up, Zhou Yi applauded vigorously: "That's great, Dr. Kyle, you are an excellent medical scientist, and you are a great mathematician! I think no one will object to you joining the project team" (to be continued......