Parameter estimation and treatment optimization in a stochastic model for immunotherapy of cancer

Adoptive Cell Transfer therapy of cancer is currently in full development and mathematical modeling is playing a critical role in this area. We study a stochastic model developed by Baar et al. (2015) for modeling immunotherapy against melanoma skin cancer. First, we estimate the parameters of the deterministic limit of the model based on biological data of tumor growth in mice. A Nonlinear Mixed Effects Model is estimated by the Stochastic Approximation Expectation Maximization algorithm. With the estimated parameters, we return to the stochastic model and calculate the probability of complete T cells exhaustion. We show that for some relevant parameter values, an early relapse is due to stochastic fluctuations (complete T cells exhaustion) with a non negligible probability. Then, focusing on the relapse related to the T cell exhaustion, we propose to optimize the treatment plan (treatment doses and restimulation times) by minimizing the T cell exhaustion probability in the parameter estimation ranges.