CAM Colloquium, 2016-11-04 - Helen Moore: Mathematical Optimization of Combination Therapy Regimens

Abstract:              Combination therapy is increasingly important, especially when resistance to drugs is a concern. However, finding the best possible doses to use can be challenging. If three drugs are to be combined, and there are 5 dose levels of each to 

be tested, this gives 53 dose combinations. Instead of testing 125 dose groups, we can use mathematical modeling and simulation to predict combinations that should be used to achieve optimal outcomes. These optimal combination predictions can then be tested against other proposed combinations. 

I will discuss the optimal control framework and show examples applying it to optimize combination therapy regimens for HIV and leukemia. These include comparisons to traditional regimens, and optimization under constraints such as fixed allowable dose levels typical for patient therapies used in the clinic.

Biography:          Dr. Helen Moore is a mathematician and an Associate Director in Quantitative Clinical Pharmacology at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ.  Dr. Moore graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and the 

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her PhD in mathematics in 1995 from Stony Brook University, and began her career as an Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College. Her original work in differential geometry focused on shapes that minimize volume under certain constraints. Over a period of 11 years in academia, she won two teaching awards and received a National Science Foundation grant for her research. While at Stanford University, she began collaborating with faculty in the medical school, and shifted her use of optimization techniques to apply them to therapies for cancer, HIV, and hepatitis C.   Dr. Moore was The Associate Director of the American Institute of Mathematics in Palo Alto, California for four years. Her first industry position was in the Modeling and Simulation group at Genentech. She later worked at Pharsight/Certara in both the consulting group and as a software and PopPKPD analysis trainer. She returned to the east coast in 2014 to join Bristol-Myers Squibb. She uses mathematics and statistics to model diseases and drug concentrations to improve drug development and to optimize drug regimens.