UBC Math Bio Seminar: Leah Edelstein-Keshet

Several years ago, Dr Kathryn Isaac, a UBC professor and clinical surgeon contacted me with an intriguing problem. In her work on cosmetic reconstructive for post-breast-cancer-surgery patients, she encounters cases of failure that result (weeks or months later) in "capsular contraction" (CC). This painful condition arises when the healing tissue (the "capsule") that forms surrounding a breast implant undergoes pathological contraction and deformation - necessitating a new rounds of surgery. In this talk, I describe work in our team to help understand the root causes of CC, the risk factors, and possible preventative treatments. We use mathematical modeling to depict and investigate hypotheses for cell-level mechanisms involved in initiating CC. I will describe two rounds of modeling, the earliest joint with Cheryl Dyck MacDonald, and the latest joint with Ms Yuqi Xiao (UBC MSc student) and Prof. Alain Goriely (Oxford).