Incorporating the role of a biomarker in a mathematical model to study drug resistance.

Drug resistance is one the major challenges in cancer treatment. In some experimental and clinical studies on breast cancer, a correlation between the degree in which cancer cells response to some chemotherapeutic drugs is linked to the level of the expression of one of the intracellular proteins, Tau protein. These studies suggest that the overexpression of Tau protein in breast cancer cells can be considered as a promising biomarker to predict drug resistance in those cells. In this study, our previously reported mathematical model of cancer dynamics in the presence of drug resistance is expanded to incorporate one possible role of a biomarker. By relying on the outcomes of a series of numerical analyses, the work discusses different cases in which the functional mechanism of a biomarker can provide critical insight that can potentially lead to revising therapeutic strategies, and consequently more successful treatment outcomes.