Medicine and mathematics are being combined to develop powerful new scientific weapons to combat killer diseases.
This year’s ‘Science at the Shine Dome’ Symposium brings together some of the finest minds from Australia and around the world to explore how medicine and mathematics are working together to throw new light on the complex genetics that underlie diseases such as cancer.
The Symposium, entitled Genomics and Mathematics, will be held at the Australian Academy of Science’s Shine Dome, on 7 May 2010. Media are welcome to attend and interview participants.
‘In a number of diseases ““ cancer, for example ““ we’re beginning to discover that some of the genes that many of us carry make us more susceptible and to see possible treatments based on our knowledge of the genetic changes that appear to be major causal factors. But we’ve only scratched the surface of these kinds of analyses,’ explains symposium organizer Professor Peter Hall.
‘The real challenge is to discover which genetic features are linked to which disease, and how. In this process of discovery, mathematics and statistics are working hand in hand with medicine and biology, allowing scientists to quantify not just the existence of connections between genes and disease, but also the strength of these associations.’
‘Applying exciting new mathematical and statistical tools in medicine enables us to explore the genetic basis of disease far more than we could using more conventional methods. This reveals patterns that would not otherwise be detectable. And these in turn can potentially lead to better approaches to diagnosis and treatment.’
Highlights of the symposium include:
“¢ Professor Terry Speed, of the Walter and Eliza hall Institute will talk about the spectacular growth in genome data in the last two years and its implications for understanding and treating all kinds of disease.
“¢ Professor Simon Tavar© of the Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge, UK, will speak about ‘Combining genomics and mathematics to learn about cancer’.
“¢ Professor Susan Clark of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research will speak about ‘Epigenetics & Genetics: Discovery of layers of change in the cancer genome’.
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On the Net:
- Details of the Symposium program are at: http://www.science.org.au/events/sats/sats2010/symposium.html
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