Colorectal cancer will kill approximately 50,000 people in the United States this year. Current treatment options, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, are often able to force the cancer into remission, but better treatments are needed to help those who don't respond to current treatments. A new and promising treatment option, monoclonal-antibody therapy, has the potential to help reduce the deaths caused by colorectal cancer, but most monoclonal-antibody drugs are currently still in trial phases, and the variations in the dosing schedule of those currently approved for use have not been heavily explored. We have modified a nonlinear ODE tumor/treatment model by de Pillis and colleagues to include monoclonal antibody treatments. Parameter values have been modified for colorectal cancer, with irinotecan as the chemotherapy agent and the two monoclonal antibodies cetuximab, which is FDA approved, and panitumumab, which is still undergoing clinical trials. We have run Matlab simulations of current treatment options, and have found new dosing schedules which, in our simulations, reduce tumor size more effectively that the current schedules. Equilibria of the system and its sensitivity to parameters have also been examined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:hmc_theses-1020 |
| Date | 30 May 2010 |
| Creators | Savage, Hannah P. |
| Publisher | Scholarship @ Claremont |
| Source Sets | Claremont Colleges |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | HMC Senior Theses |
| Rights | © 2010 Hannah P. Savage, default |
Page generated in 0.2935 seconds