Cancer treatment models

Cancer treatment models extend tumour-growth equations by adding treatment effects such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy or immune-mediated killing.

Simple treatment term

A schematic model is

where \(f(N)\) describes untreated tumour growth and \(k(C)\) is a drug-dependent killing rate based on concentration \(C(t)\).

Treatment schedules

Timing and dose can be incorporated explicitly. Models may also include healthy cells, resistant tumour subpopulations and toxicity constraints.

Purpose

Such models can be used to compare hypothetical treatment strategies, but clinical prediction requires appropriate patient data, validation and uncertainty assessment.