Sensitivity Analysis of a Cancer Model with Drug Treatment
John Burns
Department of Mathematics
Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics
Virginia Tech
In this presentation we discuss a phenomenological model of the immune
response to the growth of breast cancer cells and the impact of
certain drug therapies on the cancer. The model is a delay
differential equation which captures the interaction of cancer cells
with the immune system. The model accounts for the different cell
cycles and includes terms to evaluate drug treatments and has been
used to evaluate the effects of pulsed applications of the drug
Paclitaxel. We derive sensitivity equations for the system and
analyze the sensitivity of the model with respect to initial immune
cells and drug concentrations. We illustrate how these sensitivities
can improve the long term prediction of success or failure of a drug
treatment plan.
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