Optimization of chemotherapy regimens using mathematical programming

Abstract

Cancer is a leading cause of death and a cost burden on healthcare systems worldwide. The mainstay of treatment is chemotherapy which is most often administered empirically. Optimizing the frequency of drug administration would benefit patients by avoiding overtreatment and reducing costs. In this work, the optimization of chemotherapy regimens using mathematical programming techniques is demonstrated by developing a simple mathematical programming model for the administration of a fictitious drug. The question to be answered by the solution of the model is how often the drug should be administered so that the tumor size does not exceed a predefined size and the treatment cost reaches a minimum value. The proposed mathematical programming model is computer-implemented using a well-established mathematical programming system, thus keeping the cost and effort of obtaining the optimization results low. An example is used to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed optimization approach over the mainstay approach.