A no-holds-barred approach to cancer
April 1, 2026 — In clinical trials of potential therapies for cancer and other diseases, it's standard procedure to give all the patients the same drug dosage or treatment, on the same schedule, for the duration of the trial.
And hope for the best.
"The current design model is to do the whole experiment, and if it fails according to the metrics, it's over," says Paolo Provenzano, a University of Minnesota biomedical engineering professor and co-director of the University's Cancer Bioengineering Initiative.
"People are often treated in a vacuum," he continues. "If a patient doesn't respond to treatment, the researchers don't change the drug dosage or timing of administration."
Reimagining cancer therapy design
The fact that flexible treatment schedules aren't widely practiced is one reason only about 5 percent of new cancer therapies are ultimately successful in clinical trials, says the Cancer Bioengineering Initiative's other co-director, biomedical engineering professor David Odde. He adds:
"We want to double success rates of clinical trials from five to 10 percent, and in so doing cure more patients."
Odde and Provenzano lead a team of researchers who take a break-the-rules approach to improving success rates in cancer treatment. Their "radical" idea: bringing mathematical and engineering principles to bear on the problem.