Optimal vaccine scheduling in cancer immunotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy aims at stimulating the immune system to react against cancer stealth capabilities. It consists of repeatedly injecting small doses of a tumor-associated molecule one wants the immune system to recognize, until a consistent immune response directed against the tumor cells is observed.

We have applied the theory of optimal control to the problem of finding the optimal schedule of injections of an immunotherapeutic agent against cancer. The method employed works for a general ODE system and can be applied to find the optimal protocol in a variety of clinical problems where the kinetics of the drug or treatment and its influence on the normal physiologic functions have been described by a mathematical model.

We show that the choice of the cost function has dramatic effects on the kind of solution the optimization algorithm is able to find. This provides evidence that a careful ODE model and optimization schema must be designed by mathematicians and clinicians using their proper different perspectives.