“One doesn’t often think of cancer cells themselves being vulnerable to infections, but a team of scientists in Ottawa, Ontario is using advanced mathematical modeling to engineer viruses that will infect and destroy cancer cells. The team uses predictive modeling to investigate how treatment techniques and genetic modification might allow cancer-killing (oncolytic) viruses to overcome cancer cells’ anti-infection defenses and kill them. Kaern and Bell constructed a mathematical model of the process of infection of a cancer cell with an oncolytic virus, including how the virus would replicate, spread itself and override the cancer’s biological defenses.”
