Optimal design of chemotherapy drug protocol for cancer treatment based on a new mathematical model
by Ali Ghaffari, Mahmood Karimi
International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control (IJMIC), Vol. 5, No. 2, 2008

Abstract: Cancer chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer using drug that kills the malignant cancer cells (tumours). In chemotherapy, the drug is delivered according to a schedule which specifies the cycles of application and rest time and the dosage of the drug which must be delivered. One of the major aims of chemotherapy is to eliminate the tumour cells after a fixed treatment with minimum adverse drug effects. This paper proposes an algorithm to design an optimal chemotherapy drug protocol. The target is to optimise the number of rests, the application course and the drug dosage. A new mathematical model is employed in the form of ordinary differential equations governing cancer growth on a cell population level. The model is modified by appending cumulative drug toxicity as an additional equation. An optimisation problem is formulated for optimal control with a set of dynamic equations in the state space form. A new objective function is considered to minimise the tumour size as well as drug toxicity under a set of constraints using a proposed genetic approach. Also, the drug resistant effect in the optimal treatment schedule is applied to the model as well. Finally, results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed protocol in cancer treatment.

Online publication date: Tue, 16-Dec-2008

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control (IJMIC):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com