Date: Thursday October 16th at 12:30 - 13:10 in Árnagarður, room 306
Title: Using mathematical modeling to detect and combat drug-induced persistence in cancer
Speaker: Einar Bjarki Gunnarsson, postdoc in the Division of Applied Mathematics at the Science Institute of the University of Iceland
Abstract: Cancer cells have shown the ability to respond to drug treatment by entering a drug-tolerant ‘persister’ state, setting the stage for the evolution of drug resistance and eventual treatment failure. Characterizing the biological mechanisms underlying persistence and the evolutionary process through which resistance emerges has proven challenging. In this talk, we discuss how mathematical modeling can be applied to detect drug-induced persistence in the absence of prior biological knowledge, to measure the rate at which cancer cells adopt persistence, and to identify low-dose or intermittent drug schedules that substantially outperform conventional ‘maximum tolerated dose’ schedules. We also discuss more broadly the potential benefits of incorporating mathematical and computational models into pre-clinical research.
Bio: Einar Bjarki Gunnarsson is a postdoc in the Division of Applied Mathematics at the Science Institute of the University of Iceland. He is currently supported by the University of Iceland postdoc grant for the project „Optimizing anti-cancer drug treatment with mathematical modeling“. Einar received his PhD in 2022 at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Kevin Leder and Jasmine Foo, and he did postdoctoral training in 2022-2023 jointly at the University of Minnesota and the Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine in Los Angeles, California, USA.
