Re:A Cancer ‘Moonshot’ Needs Big Data
by nonbel on Saturday January 16, 2016 @01:56AM
(#10914565)
>"We know from epidemiological research that you need at least 5 independent mutations to get to metastatic cancer."
This is all based on the Armitage and Doll 1954 theory, they write:
"This result will be valid for large values of t (of the order of a human lifetime) provided that p_l x t, P_2 x t, ..., p_r x t are all sufficiently small (as could be assumed in an application of this theory to human cancer)"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2007940/
Here, the "the probability of occurrence of the r-th change, in that line of
descent, is p, per unit time [t]". So obviously if p or t is large enough, the probability of dying from cancer goes above 1, which is non-physical. There is a simplification being made here that was reasonable in the pre-computer age. What happens if you implement the same theory without that simplification?
This is all based on the Armitage and Doll 1954 theory, they write: "This result will be valid for large values of t (of the order of a human lifetime) provided that p_l x t, P_2 x t, ..., p_r x t are all sufficiently small (as could be assumed in an application of this theory to human cancer)" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2007940/
Here, the "the probability of occurrence of the r-th change, in that line of descent, is p, per unit time [t]". So obviously if p or t is large enough, the probability of dying from cancer goes above 1, which is non-physical. There is a simplification being made here that was reasonable in the pre-computer age. What happens if you implement the same theory without that simplification?