Resisting Resistance

Abstract

Targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and improved chemotherapies are being developed to reduce the suffering and mortality that come from human cancer. Although these approaches, and in particular combinations of them, are expected to succeed eventually to a large degree, they all suffer one obstacle: Populations of replicating cells move away—typically in a high-dimensional space—from any opposing selection pressure they encounter. They evolve resistance. It is possible, however, to develop a precise mathematical understanding of the problem and to design treatment strategies that prevent resistance if possible or manage resistance otherwise. In this article, we present the fundamental equations that characterize the evolution of resistance. We provide formulas for the probability that resistant cells exist at the start of therapy, for the average number and sizes of resistant clones, and for the probability of successful combination treatment. We also demonstrate that developing new therapies that only maximize the killing rate of cancer cells may not be optimal, and that instead the parameters determining the fraction of resistant cells and their growth rate have a larger effect on the long-term control of cancer. These mathematical tools inform the search process for optimal therapies that aim to cure cancer.