Abstract
We propose that the quantitative cancer biology community make a concerted effort to apply the methods of weather forecasting to develop an analogous theory for predicting tumor growth and treatment response. Currently, the time course of response is not predicted, but rather assessed post hoc by physical exam or imaging methods. This fundamental limitation of clinical oncology makes it extraordinarily difficult to select an optimal treatment regimen for a particular tumor of an individual patient, as well as to determine in real time whether the choice was in fact appropriate. This is especially frustrating at a time when a panoply of molecularly targeted therapies is available, and precision genetic or proteomic analyses of tumors are an established reality. By learning from the methods of weather and climate modeling, we submit that the forecasting power of biophysical and biomathematical modeling can be harnessed to hasten the arrival of a field of predictive oncology. With a successful theory of tumor forecasting, it should be possible to integrate large tumor specific datasets of varied types, and effectively defeat cancer one patient at a time.
