Sharp transitions between optimal therapy regimes reveal robust dosing strategies against drug-induced persistence

Abstract

Anti-cancer drug treatment can induce tumor cells to adopt reversible drug-tolerant persister states, facilitating resistance evolution and eventual treatment failure. Although low-dose and intermittent therapies have been proposed as alternatives to maximum tolerated dose (MTD) therapy in this setting, it remains unclear when and why these strategies are optimal. To address this question, we develop a mathematical model of drug-induced persistence where the drug can promote switching to a drug-tolerant state or inhibit reversions to sensitivity in a dose-dependent manner. We uncover sharp transitions between qualitatively distinct therapy regimes, including intermittent high-dose and continuous low-dose therapy, driven by the relative dose sensitivities of cell death and phenotypic switching. In particular, intermittent treatment is optimal when the drug inhibits reversions at doses too low to effectively kill the sensitive cells. We finally exploit the simple regime structure of optimal therapies to show that robust alternatives to MTD therapy can be identified under incomplete knowledge of the underlying dynamics