Recruiting beneficiary: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Internal supervisors: Dr. Kateřina Staňková, Dr. Rachel Cavill

Brief project description: We will develop a basic framework of Stackelberg evolutionary games for cancer treatment, based on the initial work by Staňková, Brown, Dubbeldam et al. This involves analysis of equilibria in these games (thus ESS among cancer cells as followers in this game and Stackelberg equilibria between the physician as the leader and cancer cells as followers) but also their transient dynamics and other dynamical properties. Moreover, specific instances of these games will be designed to analyse treatment in specific cancers, with patient data from ongoing trials as an input.

Updates: Mohammadreza modeled the evolution of cancer cells using evolutionary game theory and by considering resistance as an evolving trait. He considered both logistic and Gompertz growth models and analyzed the stability of the interior equilibria of these dynamics. He showed the stability of interior equilibria depends on the determinant of the competition matrix. Moreover, he proved the local stability of the interior equilibria of these complex dynamics and estimated the region of attraction of these interior equilibria. He is now working on designing optimal treatment protocols that can maximize the patient’s quality of life.

Selected contributions: