Optimizing drug regimens in cancer immunotherapy
Ali Ghaffari1 & Nasser Nasserifar2
1
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, P.O. Box 193951999, Tehran, Iran, e-mail: ghaffari@kntu.ac.ir
2
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, P.O. Box 193951999, Tehran, Iran, e-mail: naser.naserifar@gmail.com
In cancer immunotherapy, it is important to design the treatment strategies that ensure a desired amount of
tumor cells both during and at the end of treatment. Using one of the well known mathematical
models for immunotherapy of tumor-immune interactions, in this paper an algorithm is
developed to optimize the immunotherapy in cancer treatment. The optimal control strategy is
defined to maximize the effector cells and interleukin-2 concentration, while minimizing the
tumor cells. The performance index is developed to stop the growth of tumor cells even at the
end of the treatment. The maximum principle approach is the optimal control strategy in this
paper. Analyzing the results and comparing them with very recent researches, it is shown that
the amount of tumor cells with the proposed control algorithm is less then the others, both
during and after the completion of the treatment.