Nonlinear cancer chemotherapy: modelling the Norton-Simon hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical model to analyze the impact of the Norton-Simon hypothesis on dose-dense chemotherapy protocols, exploring how tumor sensitivity and treatment parameters influence outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces a fundamental tumor growth model incorporating the Norton-Simon hypothesis, assessing the benefits of dose-dense chemotherapy and parameter variations.

Findings

Dose-dense protocols can be more effective depending on tumor sensitivity.

Varying infusion duration affects treatment efficacy.

Model provides a basis for more complex chemotherapy models.

Abstract

A fundamental model of tumor growth in the presence of cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents is formulated. The model allows to study the role of the Norton-Simon hypothesis in the context of dose-dense chemotherapy. Dose-dense protocols aim at reducing the period between courses of chemotherapy from three weeks to two weeks, in order to avoid tumor regrowth between cycles. We address the conditions under which these protocols might be more or less beneficial in comparison to less dense settings, depending on the sensitivity of the tumor cells to the cytotoxic drugs. The effects of varying other parameters of the protocol, as for example the duration of each continuous drug infusion, are also inspected. We believe that the present model might serve as a foundation for the development of more sophisticated models for cancer chemotherapy.