Speaker
Description
Sometimes! Gleaning insight from a model independent of data is (understandably) rarer and rarer in mathematical biology, and determining parameters from biological data has become an established practice of modern mathematical modelling. Once parameters are estimated (ideally with bounds), an important question remains: whether (and to what extent) are biological parameters conserved? For example: do cells grow at the same rate in a dish and in an organoid? Are enzyme kinetics in a beaker the same as within a cell? Is the dose-response curve the same for a cell in and out of the body?
Often, biological parameters are implicitly assumed to be conserved - but this is an assumption we should examine and grapple with. In this talk, I will present our recent work examining conservation of biological parameters that describe the kinetics of cellular response to targeted therapeutics (i.e., drugs that have been engineered to preferentially interact or avoid specific types of cell) – specifically, to lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). We have investigated to what extent these cellular kinetics are conserved when changing experimental details or biological contexts. This work may be of particular interest to those developing targeted therapeutics or lipid nanoparticles, or to those interested in mathematical oncology (as one of the primary expected uses of targeted therapeutics is in the treatment of cancer).
