Dynamic analysis of an age structure model for oncolytic virus therapy

Abstract

Cancer is recognized as one of the serious diseases threatening human health. Oncolytic therapy is a safe and effective new cancer treatment method. Considering the limited ability of uninfected tumor cells to infect and the age of infected tumor cells have a significant effect on oncolytic therapy, an age-structured model of oncolytic therapy involving Holling-Ⅱ functional response is proposed to investigate the theoretical significance of oncolytic therapy. First, the existence and uniqueness of the solution is obtained. Furthermore, the stability of the system is confirmed. Then, the local stability and global stability of infection-free homeostasis are studied. The uniform persistence and local stability of the infected state are studied. The global stability of the infected state is proved by constructing the Lyapunov function. Finally, the theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation. The results show that when the tumor cells are at the appropriate age, injection of the right amount of oncolytic virus can achieve the purpose of tumor treatment.

Keywords

• oncolytic virotherapy
• age-structured model
• holling-ⅱ functional response
• stability
• immune response