Using the work of Shelby Wilson and Doron Levy (2012), we develop a
mathematical model to study the growth and responsiveness of cancerous tumors
to various immunotherapy treatments. We use numerical simulations and
stability analysis to predict long-term behavior of passive and aggressive
tumors with a range of antigenicities. For high antigenicity aggressive tumors,
we show that remission is only achieved after combination treatment with
TGF-
inhibitors and a peptide vaccine. Additionally, we show that combination treatment
has limited effectiveness on low antigenicity aggressive tumors and that using
TGF-
inhibition or vaccine treatment alone proves generally ineffective for all tumor types
considered. A key feature of our model is the identification of separate cancer stem
cell and tumor cell populations. Our model predicts that even with combination
treatment, failure to completely eliminate the cancer stem cell population leads to
cancer recurrence.
Keywords
cancer stem cells, immunotherapy, recurrence, ordinary
differential equations, stability
