Therapy burden, drug resistance, and optimal treatment regimen for cancer chemotherapy

Email: boldrini{at}ime.unicamp.brAuthor to whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: michel{at}Incc.br Three nonlinear models of tumour cell growth under continuousdelivery of cycle nonspecific anticancer agents are studied.A dynamical optimization problem with the objective of minimizingthe final level of tumour cells is posed for these mathematicalsetups. The simplest setup does not possess toxicity constraints,whereas the other setups contain a dynamical equation describingthe therapy burden as a toxicity criterion. In addition, thethird setting contains the dynamics of drug resistant cells.A discussion conceming the optimal strategies of the respectivemodels is performed.