A SYSTEMATIC TREATMENT METHODOLOGY FOR EWING SARCOMA

 
 

1. Project Background and Description

In Medicine, today, we treat the symptoms of most Cancers. We only provide cures in very few cases. As DNA pioneer and Nobel Laureate James Watson has stated:

“New therapies work for just a few months and we have nothing for major cancers such as the lung, colon and breast that have become metastatic.”

We need a better approach if we are to deliver Systematic, Targeted, Effective Or Efficient TREATMENTS for Cancer.

We need far better methodologies to be able to actually CURE Cancer.

System level treatments & cures for Cancer have been a dream of the medical community for many years, but they have proven elusive. The Hallmarks of Cancer (HoC) provide an approach that could be utilized for systematic treatment, through functional decomposition of cancer. While progress has been made in characterizing various hallmark cancer processes, a comprehensive, detailed & unified Systems Engineering description of cancer that can be used & applied for treatment has yet to be achieved.

2. Project Scope

Our Research Objective will be to converge Science, Mathematics & Engineering via Systems Engineering. We will use that converged knowledge to develop a prototypical Targeted, Effective and Efficient Systematic Treatment Methodology (STM) for Ewing Sarcoma.

The STM provides the framework that

  1. Allows us to perceive Cancer as complex dynamical and evolvable systems.

  2. Consolidates and Integrates the fragmented pieces of Science to make Nature work for us.

  3. Facilitates methodical and personalized treatments and cures.

  4. Allows outcome predictions for complex treatments

  5. Provides for the patient to be an active participant in their treatment:

    1. Aware of the choices they have.

    2. The consequences of their choices.

    3. The progress being made. 

3. High-Level Requirements

We need to complete the construction and integration of the entities in our STM prototype, which looks like this: 

4. Deliverables

The deliverable will be a functional prototype STM that allows a synthetic Treatment Decision Review for a hypothetical patient. It will allow us to simulate the provision of the development of a treatment regimen for the hypothetical patient and will provide the basis for application to in-vitro and, ultimately, in-vivo cases of Ewing Sarcoma.

It will look like this: