To all recent grads: Don’t throw out your calculus books just yet. It turns out that there may be a link between mathematics and curing leukemia. Researchers from the University of Maryland (College Park) and Ecole Superieure d’Electricite (Gif-sur-Yvette, France) have created a mathematical model that uses patients’ individually measured parameters to determine when a dose of a booster “cancer vaccine” should be administered.

The booster is developed from the patient’s pre-therapy blood, which is irradiated to kill cancer cells. The “vaccine” is then administered to the patient at the mathematically predicted time.

If administered at the right time, when the patient’s immune response is weakest, the vaccine maximizes the patient’s natural immune response, which, combined with the drug imatinib, increases the chances of long-term remission and may potentially cure chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), according to the study. Because everyone’s immune response time is different, the mathematical model uses rules for application to a specific patient.

Besides being an excellent example of a multidiscipline strategy, the research takes into account a mathematical model (developed after a four-year study of CML patients), a patient’s biolgoical information, and drug efficacy. It is a very different, and exciting, way of looking at personalized medicine, as observed by U of MD mathematics professor Doron Levy who announced “Give me a thousand patients, and with this mathematical model, I can give you a thousand different customized treatment plans.”

Several years ago, I wrote an article about the changing academic programs of some pharmacy schools. Several professors reminded me, however, that the core essentials will always be necessary, regardless of the pace of technology, including mathematics and computers. What are the core courses you would recommend to incoming pharmacy school students working to find tomorrow’s drug products?