Model-based Angiogenic Inhibition of Tumor Growth using Modern Robust Control Method

Abstract

Cancer is one of the most destructive and lethal illnesses of the modern civilization. In the last decades, clinical cancer research shifted towards molecular targeted therapies which have limited side effects in comparison to conventional chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Anti-angiogenic therapy is one of the most promising cancer treatment methods. The dynamical model for tumor growth under angiogenic stimulator/inhibitor control was posed by Hahnfeldt et al. (1999), and it was investigated and partly modified many times. In this paper, a modified version of the originally published model is used in order to describe a continuous infusion therapy. To generalize individualized therapies a robust control method is proposed using ℋ ∞ methodology. Uncertainty weighting functions are determined based on the real pathophysiological case and simulations are performed on different tumor volumes to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method.