PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Y. Ma
AU  - P.K. Newton
TI  - Nonlinear dynamics of chemotherapeutic resistance
AID  - 10.1101/300582
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 300582
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/12/300582.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/12/300582.full
AB  - We use a three-component replicator dynamical system with healthy cells, sensitive cells, and resistant cells, with a prisoner’s dilemma payoff matrix from evolutionary game theory to understand the phenomenon of competitive release, which is the main mechanism by which tumors develop chemotherapeutic resistance. By comparing the phase portraits of the system without therapy compared to continuous therapy above a certain threshold, we show that chemotherapeutic resistance develops if there are pre-exisiting resistance cells in the population. We examine the basin boundaries of attraction associated with the chemo-sensitive population and the chemo-resistant population for increasing values of chemo-concentrations and show their spiral intertwined structure. We also examine the fitness landscapes both with and without continuous therapy and show that with therapy, the average fitness as well as the fitness functions of each of the subpopulations initially increases, but eventually decreases monotonically as the resistant subpopulation saturates the tumor.