As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine (UWI STA), the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We are pleased to present our me­dia se­ries, “UWI Sci­en­tists Speak”. In this se­ries, our sci­en­tists who con­tin­ue to re­ceive the na­tion’s high­est ho­n­our, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will show­case some of their work.

This week, we hear from Dr Sreed­hara Rao Gu­nakala and Dr Vic­tor Job, who dis­cuss the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of math­e­mat­ics in can­cer treat­ment.

Dr Gu­nakala is a se­nior lec­tur­er and cur­rent head of the De­part­ment of Math­e­mat­ics and Sta­tis­tics at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, while Dr Job is a lec­tur­er in math­e­mat­ics at The UWI, Mona Cam­pus, Ja­maica.–Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, prin­ci­pal, UWI STA

Nan­otech­nol­o­gy, the ap­pli­ca­tion of par­ti­cles and mol­e­cules at the nanoscale (about one hun­dred thou­sand times small­er than the width of a hu­man hair), has rev­o­lu­tionised can­cer treat­ment in the last decade. In the ever-chang­ing world of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary nan­otech­nol­o­gy-based method called nanopar­ti­cle hy­per­ther­mia is emerg­ing as a bea­con of hope in treat­ing mus­cle and prostate tu­mours, along with breast can­cer.

This ground­break­ing ap­proach utilis­es the pow­er of tiny par­ti­cles to in­duce lo­calised heat­ing with­in tu­mours, cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment hos­tile to can­cer cells while spar­ing healthy tis­sues. The re­al mag­ic, how­ev­er, lies in the pre­ci­sion of this treat­ment, and that is where math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling steps in.

Imag­ine try­ing to hit a mov­ing tar­get. Now, pic­ture how dif­fi­cult it will be if the tar­get is a mi­cro­scop­ic can­cer cell with­in the hu­man body. This is the chal­lenge re­searchers face when de­vel­op­ing treat­ment strate­gies util­is­ing nanopar­ti­cles that on­ly tar­get and de­stroy can­cer cells but not healthy cells. How­ev­er, math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling has now be­come an in­valu­able tool for over­com­ing this hur­dle. It al­lows re­searchers to pre­dict how nanopar­ti­cles will be­have in the body in re­sponse to var­i­ous fac­tors in dif­fer­ent drug de­liv­ery sce­nar­ios, en­abling them to fine-tune treat­ment pa­ra­me­ters. This pre­ci­sion en­sures that the heat­ing ef­fect is fo­cused sole­ly on the tar­get­ed can­cer cells.

At its core, nanopar­ti­cle hy­per­ther­mia is a con­trolled heat­ing tech­nique ap­plied to can­cer­ous tis­sues, of­ten used in con­junc­tion with ra­dio­ther­a­py, chemother­a­py, or im­muno­log­i­cal ther­a­py. The beau­ty of this tech­nol­o­gy lies in its abil­i­ty to min­imise col­lat­er­al dam­age to healthy tis­sues, thus re­duc­ing ad­verse side ef­fects ex­pe­ri­enced by can­cer pa­tients. For pa­tients, this trans­lates to po­ten­tial­ly more ef­fec­tive and less in­va­sive treat­ment op­tions, lead­ing to an im­proved qual­i­ty of life dur­ing and af­ter treat­ment. It is not just a sci­en­tif­ic break­through but a step clos­er to per­son­alised, pa­tient-cen­tric can­cer care.

The fu­ture of can­cer treat­ment lies in the syn­er­gy be­tween sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, and com­mu­ni­ty well-be­ing. Nanopar­ti­cle hy­per­ther­mia, guid­ed by math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling, aligns seam­less­ly with pub­lic and pol­i­cy­mak­er per­spec­tives on health­care. By bridg­ing the gap be­tween the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts and prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions, this re­search holds the promise of trans­form­ing can­cer treat­ment and shap­ing the health land­scape of our com­mu­ni­ties. There­fore, this re­search is not just about sci­ence; it is about mak­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact on the lives of in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties alike.