Optimizing cancer pharmacotherapeutics using mathematical modeling and a systems biology approach

Research in mathematics and in mathematical biology on cancer and its treatments has been soaring in the past 10 years at an unprecedented speed. Such thriving is likely due as much to new findings in fundamental biology as to an emerging general interest from mathematicians and engineers towards applications in biology and medicine and to their subsequently designed representations and predictions of tumor processes that are now allowed by modern means of computation and simulation. This article, which does not claim the status of an extended review paper on mathematical models of cancer and its treatment, is focused on modeling in a systems biology perspective. I will list here the most necessary mathematical methods, in my opinion, which, while enforcing already existing methods, should be further developed towards designing and applying optimized individualized treatments of cancer in the clinic.