Mathematicians help to cure cancer in a creative manner

Mathematic modelling of a complicated network. （Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn）

A recent academic essay on maths is expected to help in treatment of intestine cancer by creating a model for new drugs to be developed.

Co-authored by Shing-tung Yau, Wu Rongling and Wu Jie, who are a group of professors at the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BIMSA), the essay titled "Hypernetwork modeling and topology of high-order interactions for complex systems" was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Utilizing the homology of GLMY, a statistical mechanics framework is proposed, providing a new perspective for revealing high-order interactions in complex systems.

"High-order interactions are the core elements of complex systems," said Wu, "yet existing network models primarily focus on pairwise interactions, lacking a universal model to capture high-order interactions (HOI)." That's where their study gains an advantage, namely by integrating evolutionary game theory and behavioral ecology into a unified statistical mechanics framework, it has reconstructed bidirectional, signed, and weighted supernetworks. These supernetworks, according to Wu, can describe, analyze, and explain how nodes are affected by their own feedback, the strategies of other nodes, and the synergistic effects of interaction strategies between nodes, as well as how various directed interactions are influenced by individual nodes—addressing key mechanistic questions.

This model may become the essential procedure for unraveling highly complex communities, such as intestinal microbiota, providing important information for the development of this field, Wu added, saying that some pharmaceutical teams have already been cooperating with them on the R&D of new drugs in curing intestine cancer.

Their future research direction will be widened into more diverse medical sectors, including the Traditional Chinese Medicine, said Wu. "A TCM team is cooperating with us on the issue, so as to propel standardization of TCM for wider use and recognition in the world."