Pictured is Dr. Urszula Ledzewics, SIUE distinguished research professor and professor of mathematics and statistics.
Faculty members from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Washington University in St. Louis are collaborating on a National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant, examining ways to control cancer treatments and the spread of infectious diseases.
SIUE Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Dr. Urszula Ledzewicz and Wash U. Associate Professor Heinz Schaettler, from the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, recently were awarded the grant—as principal investigators from their respective institutions—to focus on applications of optimal control theory, a field bridging mathematics and engineering to address problems arising in biomedicine.
Ledzewicz, an SIUE distinguished research professor, received approximately $202,000 for SIUE’s portion of the project. She has worked with Schaettler, her husband, on projects for many years. In their past research they have focused their research on mathematical models for various types of cancer treatments. This work will continue under the new grant, aiming at more insights on cancer therapies, especially for combinations of traditional and novel approaches.
These treatments include chemotherapy or radiotherapy targeting cancer cells; immunotherapy, which bolsters the immune response to fighting cancer cells, and anti-angiogenic therapy, responsible for blocking cancer blood vessel growth, thus incapacitating tumors. Through optimal control, the two will analyze the effectiveness of various protocols for combination therapies in the fight against cancer.
“Dr. Ledzewicz is an internationally renowned scholar in the applications of optimal control,” said Dr. Adam Weyhaupt, an associate professor and chair of the SIUE Department of Mathematics and Statistics. “Her work advances the current state of the art in optimal control, while her continued work with graduate students at SIUE will impact the field for years to come.”
Dr. Jerry Weinberg, dean of the SIUE Graduate School, said the project allows for the dissemination of knowledge on optimal control theory to graduate and undergraduate students in mathematics and engineering.
“The work of SIUE’s Dr. Ledzewicz and Dr. Schaettler at Washington University is a key collaboration between our two institutions,” Weinberg added. “Their research contributes to cutting-edge cancer studies and seeks to optimize cancer treatments.”
One of the specific topics under investigation in the project will be metronomic chemotherapy. This is a way of administering chemotherapy at a lower dose—varying or constant—over prolonged periods that has been found to be very effective in several aspects.
“This kind of protocol not only kills cancer cells, but has an anti-angiogenic effect and provides a boost to the immune system,” Ledzewicz said. “It’s like killing three birds with one stone.
“There is growing evidence that indicates more is not necessarily better, but a properly calibrated biographically optimal dose (BOD) can lead to better outcomes.”
This is a topic on which Ledzewicz and Schaettler plan to collaborate with researchers at the Center of Cancer System Biology of Tufts University School of Medicine to use methods of optimal control theory on numerous types of cancer treatments.
Ledzewicz said problems and results of the analysis also can apply to other fields in biomedicine. A second new direction to be pursued under the grant concerns epidemiology—the branch of medicine that focuses on the incidence and spread of infectious diseases in large populations. The two collaborators intend to analyze mathematical models for the spread of infectious diseases from the point of view how to apply vaccinations, treatment and sanitation with the goal to minimize the number of infected individuals, while at the same time controlling the cost.
Ledzewicz has had her research supported by NSF grants for nearly 25 years, but in the current time of tight federal budgets, she said she is “happy that the NSF decided to continue this support.”