On applications of the Hamilton-Jacobi equations and optimal control theory to problems of chemotherapy of malignant tumors (Q2317230)

The work investigates a problem in an interesting domain of applications of control theory, in medicine, and precisely in malignant tumors therapy. Following mathematical model for the chemotherapy of a malignant tumor is considered: \(\frac{dm}{dt}=g(m)-\gamma mg(h)\), \(\frac{dh}{dt}=-\alpha h+u(t)\) , \(m(t_o)=m_o\), \(h(t_o)=h_o\), \(\gamma>0\), \(\alpha>0\), where \(m\) denotes the number of malignant cells, \(h\) the number of drugs that can kill tumor cells, \(f(h)\) is the therapy function describing the effect of a drug on tumor cells, \(u(t)\) -- the control function -- denotes the number of drugs injected into a tumor at time \(t\) and \(g(m)\) is a function of malignant cells growing according to a logistic low. The therapy function is a piecewise monotone continuous differentiable function. The goal of the study is to find an admissible control \(u(t)\) able to minimize at the end \(T\) of the process a cost function modeling the number of malignant cells, \(\sigma(m(T))=m^{\beta}\) \((T;t_o;m_o;h_o;u(.))\) This is a classical optimal control problem. The value function is introduced and calculated. Under some additional assumptions the optimal control for the stated problem is obtained.