Establishment and Simulation of Adaptive Strategy for Cancer Therapy Under Multi-Drug Conditions
Article Information
Abstract
Previous research has focused on formulating cancer treatment strategies within a single-drug framework, which clearly fails to effectively address the practical needs of combination drug therapy in clinical settings. Therefore, this study develops a multi-drug cancer treatment model and conducts strategy design and simulation investigations under hypothetical patient-specific parameters for dual-drug regimens. Based on the previously proposed adaptive threshold strategy and several novel strategies integrating threshold-based and sequential administration patterns, and conducted a parameter search and optimization of upper/lower thresholds was performed to explore the performance improvement of strategies resulting from threshold adjustments in the multi-drug framework. Furthermore, a threshold decay coefficient was introduced to facilitate further optimization and enhance strategy performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the newly proposed multi-drug cancer treatment strategies outperform the extended traditional strategy. Parameter optimization of both thresholds and the threshold decay coefficient improved the survival benefit of the strategies to varying degrees. This indicates that, compared with the traditional parallel multi-drug treatment model, strategies incorporating sequential drug administration characteristics significantly exploit the synergistic effects among drugs, yielding superior therapeutic outcomes.
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
Data Availability Statement
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
AI Use Statement
Ethical Approval and Consent to Participate
References
- Bukowski, K., Kciuk, M., & Kontek, R. (2020). Mechanisms of multidrug resistance in cancer chemotherapy. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(9), 3233.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Holohan, C., Van Schaeybroeck, S., Longley, D. B., & Johnston, P. G. (2013). Cancer drug resistance: An evolving paradigm. Nature Reviews Cancer, 13(10), 714-726.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Ganesh, K., & Massagué, J. (2021). Targeting metastatic cancer. Nature Medicine, 27(1), 34-44.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Tevaarwerk, A. J., Gray, R. J., Schneider, B. P., Smith, M. L., Wagner, L. I., Fetting, J. H., & ... (2013). Survival in patients with metastatic recurrent breast cancer after adjuvant chemotherapy: Little evidence of improvement over the past 30 years. Cancer, 119(6), 1140-1148.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Gatenby, R. A., & Brown, J. S. (2020). The evolution and ecology of resistance in cancer therapy. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 10(11), a040972.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Gillies, R. J., Verduzco, D., & Gatenby, R. A. (2012). Evolutionary dynamics of carcinogenesis and why targeted therapy does not work. Nature Reviews Cancer, 12(7), 487-493.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Zhang, J., Cunningham, J. J., Brown, J. S., & Gatenby, R. A. (2017). Integrating evolutionary dynamics into treatment of metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. Nature Communications, 8(1), 1816.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Zhang, J., Cunningham, J., Brown, J., & Gatenby, R. (2022). Evolution-based mathematical models significantly prolong response to abiraterone in metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer and identify strategies to further improve outcomes. Elife, 11, e76284.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Martin, R. B., Fisher, M. E., Minchin, R. F., & Teo, K. L. (1992). Optimal control of tumor size used to maximize survival time when cells are resistant to chemotherapy. Mathematical biosciences, 110(2), 201-219.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Monro, H. C., & Gaffney, E. A. (2009). Modelling chemotherapy resistance in palliation and failed cure. Journal of theoretical biology, 257(2), 292-302.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Gatenby, R. A., Silva, A. S., Gillies, R. J., & Frieden, B. R. (2009). Adaptive therapy. Cancer research, 69(11), 4894-4903.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Hansen, E., Woods, R. J., & Read, A. F. (2017). How to use a chemotherapeutic agent when resistance to it threatens the patient. PLOS Biology, 15(2), e2001110.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Strobl, M. A., West, J., Viossat, Y., Damaghi, M., Robertson-Tessi, M., Brown, J. S., ... & Anderson, A. R. (2021). Turnover modulates the need for a cost of resistance in adaptive therapy. Cancer research, 81(4), 1135-1147.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Hansen, E., & Read, A. F. (2020). Modifying adaptive therapy to enhance competitive suppression. Cancers, 12(12), 3556.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Viossat, Y., & Noble, R. (2021). A theoretical analysis of tumour containment. Nature ecology & evolution, 5(6), 826-835.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Kim, E., Brown, J. S., Eroglu, Z., & Anderson, A. R. (2021). Adaptive therapy for metastatic melanoma: predictions from patient calibrated mathematical models. Cancers, 13(4), 823.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - West, J., You, L., Zhang, J., Gatenby, R. A., Brown, J. S., Newton, P. K., & Anderson, A. R. (2020). Towards multidrug adaptive therapy. Cancer research, 80(7), 1578-1589.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] - Gallagher, K., Strobl, M. A., Park, D. S., Spoendlin, F. C., Gatenby, R. A., Maini, P. K., & Anderson, A. R. (2024). Mathematical model-driven deep learning enables personalized adaptive therapy. Cancer Research, 84(11), 1929-1941.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
Cite This Article
TY - JOUR AU - Li, Hanyin AU - Wu, Wanqin AU - Tan, Xuewen PY - 2026 DA - 2026/03/07 TI - Establishment and Simulation of Adaptive Strategy for Cancer Therapy Under Multi-Drug Conditions JO - Journal of Numerical Simulations in Physics and Mathematics T2 - Journal of Numerical Simulations in Physics and Mathematics JF - Journal of Numerical Simulations in Physics and Mathematics VL - 2 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 8 DO - 10.62762/JNSPM.2025.161987 UR - https://www.icck.org/article/abs/JNSPM.2025.161987 KW - computer simulation KW - multi-drug cancer therapy KW - adaptive strategy AB - Previous research has focused on formulating cancer treatment strategies within a single-drug framework, which clearly fails to effectively address the practical needs of combination drug therapy in clinical settings. Therefore, this study develops a multi-drug cancer treatment model and conducts strategy design and simulation investigations under hypothetical patient-specific parameters for dual-drug regimens. Based on the previously proposed adaptive threshold strategy and several novel strategies integrating threshold-based and sequential administration patterns, and conducted a parameter search and optimization of upper/lower thresholds was performed to explore the performance improvement of strategies resulting from threshold adjustments in the multi-drug framework. Furthermore, a threshold decay coefficient was introduced to facilitate further optimization and enhance strategy performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the newly proposed multi-drug cancer treatment strategies outperform the extended traditional strategy. Parameter optimization of both thresholds and the threshold decay coefficient improved the survival benefit of the strategies to varying degrees. This indicates that, compared with the traditional parallel multi-drug treatment model, strategies incorporating sequential drug administration characteristics significantly exploit the synergistic effects among drugs, yielding superior therapeutic outcomes. SN - 3068-9082 PB - Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge LA - English ER -
@article{Li2026Establishm,
author = {Hanyin Li and Wanqin Wu and Xuewen Tan},
title = {Establishment and Simulation of Adaptive Strategy for Cancer Therapy Under Multi-Drug Conditions},
journal = {Journal of Numerical Simulations in Physics and Mathematics},
year = {2026},
volume = {2},
number = {1},
pages = {1-8},
doi = {10.62762/JNSPM.2025.161987},
url = {https://www.icck.org/article/abs/JNSPM.2025.161987},
abstract = {Previous research has focused on formulating cancer treatment strategies within a single-drug framework, which clearly fails to effectively address the practical needs of combination drug therapy in clinical settings. Therefore, this study develops a multi-drug cancer treatment model and conducts strategy design and simulation investigations under hypothetical patient-specific parameters for dual-drug regimens. Based on the previously proposed adaptive threshold strategy and several novel strategies integrating threshold-based and sequential administration patterns, and conducted a parameter search and optimization of upper/lower thresholds was performed to explore the performance improvement of strategies resulting from threshold adjustments in the multi-drug framework. Furthermore, a threshold decay coefficient was introduced to facilitate further optimization and enhance strategy performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the newly proposed multi-drug cancer treatment strategies outperform the extended traditional strategy. Parameter optimization of both thresholds and the threshold decay coefficient improved the survival benefit of the strategies to varying degrees. This indicates that, compared with the traditional parallel multi-drug treatment model, strategies incorporating sequential drug administration characteristics significantly exploit the synergistic effects among drugs, yielding superior therapeutic outcomes.},
keywords = {computer simulation, multi-drug cancer therapy, adaptive strategy},
issn = {3068-9082},
publisher = {Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge}
}
Article Metrics
Publisher's Note
ICCK stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2026 by the Author(s). Published by Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Portico