title: Drug kinetics and drug resistance in optimal chemotherapy.
abstract: A system of differential equations for the control of tumor cells growth in a cycle nonspecific chemotherapy is presented. First-order drug kinetics and drug resistance are taken into account in a class of optimal control problems. The results show that the strategy corresponding to the maximum rate of drug injection is optimal for the Malthusian model of cell growth (which is a relatively good model for the initial phase of tumor growth). For more general models of cell growth, this strategy proved to be suboptimal under certain conditions.
authors.affiliation: Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica-CNPq, R. Lauro Müller, Rio de Janeiro-RJ-Brasil.
authors.forename: M I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Boldrini
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Bassanezi
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000493:pharmacokinetics* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002455:Cell Division / Q000187:drug effects; D004351:Drug Resistance; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents