Research on the application of mathematical modeling in tumor immunology in the context of chemotherapy

Abstract

Cancer is not only a highly detrimental disease but also a particularly grave health concern. Moreover, the current incidence and mortality rates in our country are far from encouraging, making the prevention and control situation very challenging. Therefore, identifying the most scientific and effective treatment methods has become one of our primary research focuses. This paper, building upon previous models and incorporating resistance factors, categorizes tumor cells into those that are sensitive to chemotherapy drugs and those that become resistant. Using MATLAB, we have adjusted various sensitivity parameters in the model to simulate the number of tumor cells over 40 days. This simulation aims to analyze the sensitivity levels of tumor cells to different parameters upon the inclusion of resistance factors. The initial data used for the simulation were derived from the original paper. Ultimately, our findings indicate that tumor cells are most sensitive to the chemotherapy drugs killing rate for normal tumor cells and the decay rate of the chemotherapy drug. Due to the drug resistance factor, the sensitivity of different parameters is influenced. For parameters related to chemotherapy drugs, the final results, when incorporating this factor, may deviate significantly from those of previous models without this factor. For instance, the decay rate of chemotherapy drugs might result in a larger total number of tumor cells or a steeper trend compared to previous findings.