| dc.description.abstract | Cancer has one of the biggest impacts on our society as almost 2 million new cases will be diagnosed each year and approximately 38% of people in the US will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. Cancer is the uncontrolled proliferation of cells in the body due to mutations that result in tumors. Current systems that model the growth of cancer cells by determining the IC50 are inefficient because they are time dependent and often do not consider the Emax value, leading to inconsistencies in the IC50 value obtained. The IC50 value is important in consistently giving the correct dosage of chemotherapy drugs to patients. Another common issue with chemotherapy drugs is the side effects caused by high dosages and nonspecific cellular targets. These effects can significantly impact a patient's quality of life and cause other significant health problems after the chemotherapy. The use of nanoparticles to deliver anticancer drugs to cancer cells may improve the side effects often associated with chemotherapy by targeting cancer cells with greater specificity and killing smaller amounts of noncancer cells. Carbon allotropes such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and nitrogen doped graphene quantum dots (NGQDs) can be linked to chemotherapy drugs to better target cancer cells because they possess qualities such as resistance to degradation, increased circulation time, and high surface area to volume ratio. Our project aims to create a new mathematical model which is time independent to provide a better, more consistent IC50 value to use in the dosage of drug. In addition, we are exploring the use of carbon nanoparticles in targeting cancer cells and their ability to decrease the amount of drug necessary therefore decreasing the IC50 of the drug, resulting in decreased chemotherapy side effects. | |
