Mathematical modeling of leukemia chemotherapy in bone marrow

¹ Department of Mathematics, Universidad de Cádiz, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain
² Biomedical Research and Innovation Institute of Cadiz (INiBICA) Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar, Cádiz, Spain
³ Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Hospital Virgen del Rocío, Seville, Spain

^* Corresponding author: ana.nino@uca.es

Received: 28 June 2023
Accepted: 8 July 2023

Abstract

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) accounts for the 80% of leukemias when coming down to pediatric ages. Survival of these patients has increased by a considerable amount in recent years. However, around 15 20% of treatments are unsuccessful. For this reason, it is definitely required to come up with new strategies to study and select which patients are at higher risk of relapse. Thus the importance to monitor the amount of leukemic cells to predict relapses in the first treatment phase. In this work, we develop a mathematical model describing the behavior of ALL, examining the evolution of a leukemic clone when treatment is applied. In the study of this model it can be observed how the risk of relapse is connected with the response in the first treatment phase. This model is able to simulate cell dynamics without treatment, representing a virtual patient bone marrow behavior. Furthermore, several parameters are related to treatment dynamics, therefore proposing a basis for future works regarding childhood ALL survival improvement.