Mathematical modeling about the scheduling of combination cancer therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors

Time: 2021-01-15 20:59:00

Topic：Mathematical modeling about the scheduling of combination cancer therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors

Speaker：Xiulan Lai      Renmin University of China

Time：2021-01-15 15:00--18:00

Location：Online conference

Introduction：

       There has been much progress in recent years in developing checkpoint inhibitors, primarily PD-1 antibodies and PD-L1 antibodies. However, because of lack of tumor-infiltrating effector T cells, many patients in clinical trials do not respond to checkpoint inhibitor treatment. It was recently suggested that the combination of an immune checkpoint inhibitor and another anti-tumor drug, such as a chemotherapy drug or radiotherapy, may function synergistically to induce more effective antitumor immune responses. The questions in the design of cancer clinical trials with combination of two drugs includes in which proportion (dosage) and in which order to administer the drugs.

In this talk, I will address the scheduling question by mathematical modeling approaches.

We considered the combination therapies of cancer with a checkpoint inhibitor and a cancer vaccine (or anti-VEGF) using mathematical models. We use mathematical models to explore the efficacy (synergistic or antagonistic) of the two drugs and the appropriate dosage and timing of the combination treatment.