Oxford's Philip Maini says maths can sharpen cancer therapy

London,UPDATED: Aug 25, 2026 19:28 IST

An Indian-origin academic in the UK has said that applying mathematics to living systems can uncover new biological insights and help identify therapies with real societal benefit. Philip Maini, Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford, said his work with mathematicians, clinicians and biologists has already offered important insights into the design of combination cancer therapy.

Maini said his team has developed mathematical models of angiogenesis, oxygen delivery and cell growth, and is now trying to validate them experimentally. "Ultimately, we hope this will be a tool that can predict the chemo/radiotherapy protocol that will lead to the best patient outcome," he told the university's 'PULSE' platform this week.

Maini, who was born in Northern Ireland to Punjabi immigrants, said a biologist focuses on "what" is happening, while a mathematician wants to get to the core of "how" things happen. He believes that bringing these two approaches together can improve understanding of what is going on within a system and reveal new ways to tackle problems, including the development of better disease therapies.

More recently, he has applied mathematical models to adaptive therapy, which recognises that tumours are not made up of uniform cells. He said trying to wipe out as many tumour cells as possible may not be the most effective approach. "A key reason why tumour therapies fail is because they select for resistant cancer cells. Tumours can be thought of as ecosystems made up of both drug-sensitive cells and drug-resistant cells, all competing for the same resources," Maini said.

He added: "Normally, drug-sensitive cells are the dominant population, because having a drug-resistant phenotype tends to carry a fitness cost. But if you apply a therapy so strongly that it wipes out all the sensitive cells, this allows the resistant ones to dominate. Eventually, this leads to cancer progression." He said the idea behind adaptive therapy is that the drug is applied at a level that keeps a baseline population of sensitive cells, which can keep the resistant tumour cells in check.

Maini said, "The strength of mathematical modelling is that you can try all sorts of different strategies at literally no cost and in a way that you simply couldn't do using clinical tests." The academic, now in his 60s, also remains passionate about teaching, with his lectures on YouTube drawing millions of views. The director of Oxford's Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology and author of 'Mathematical Biology: A Very Short Introduction' said the field remains "exciting" because there are constantly new problems that "require entirely new types of maths to address".

With PTI Inputs

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