News
A new objective for optimising cancer therapy - The expected lifetime payoff
A new objective for the optimisation of cancer chemotherapy was developed by the Burroughs lab in Tzamarias et al, 2025. They used ideas in branching processes to develop the life-expectancy payoff that averages over outcomes, such as cure and death. It is an interpretable, and in principle parametrisable payoff. Tzamarias, who just submitted his PhD thesis, will continue this work being awarded a 6 month EPSRC postdoctoral pathways fellowship.
Pregnancy journey predictive model published
The mathematical model underlying Tommy’s national miscarriage support tool was published in Lancet Regional, Koki et al 2025. The paper developed 2 predictive model, that for miscarriage prediction at next pregnancy, and a time to pregnancy, that included the possibility of a fertility problem. These were combined to model the pregnancy journey.
PNAS paper on Climate Variability and Vector-borne Diseases
It's been a very long process, but work by Robin Thompson (now Oxford), Will Hart (also now Oxford), Alex Kaye, Matt Keeling and collaborators at Fort Collins and UKHSA has finally been published in PNAS: Climate variability amplifies the need for vector-borne disease outbreak preparedness.
We explain that while the average trend of increasing temperatures is going to expand the range of many vector-borne diseases - it is also very important to consider the variability around this trend. Unusually hot summers may lead to vector-borne disease outbreaks in the UK well before predictions based on the average.