What is mathematical modeling and why is it important in breast cancer research?
Amazingly, the best tools we have to study the intricate vicissitudes of biological phenomena require mathematics. Beyond accumulating a series of descriptions of phenomena, powerful as they may be, mathematics permits us to explore the patterns and principles underlying a biological phenomenon and to make predictions. We need to make these prediction tools available to clinicians and the tools themselves more widely available to cancer researchers. To succeed in this goal, we must publish understandable articles about mathematics in the journals that cancer researchers and doctors read. With my research, for example, I realized that we must study, in real time, the dynamics of the IBC clusters. What I wanted to know about them is how they communicate, or signal, both internally and to the cells lining vessels. Learning this teaches us how to intervene and prevent the aggressive changes these cells are capable of. Based on modeling intracellular signaling pathways, we have learned some
