New plan of attack in cancer fight: Two-drug combination, under certain circumstances, can eliminate disease
As described in a paper recently published in eLife, Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and co-author Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a "targeted therapy" — a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer’s ability to grow and spread — could effectively cure nearly all cancers. Though the research is not a cure for cancer, Nowak said it does offer hope to researchers and patients alike. "In some sense this is like the mathematics that allows us to calculate how to send a rocket to the moon, but it doesn’t tell you how to build a rocket that goes to the moon," Nowak said…