Combining Mechanistic Models and Machine Learning for Personalized Chemotherapy and Surgery Sequencing in Breast Cancer

Mathematical and computational oncology has increased the pace of cancer research towards the advancement of personalized therapy. Serving the pressing need to exploit the large amounts of currently underutilized data, such approaches bring a significant clinical advantage in tailoring the therapy. CHIMERA is a novel system that combines mechanistic modelling and machine learning for personalized chemotherapy and surgery sequencing in breast cancer. It optimizes decision-making in personalized breast cancer therapy by connecting tumor growth behaviour and chemotherapy effects through predictive modelling and learning. We demonstrate the capabilities of CHIMERA in learning simultaneously the tumor growth patterns, across several types of breast cancer, and the pharmacokinetics of a typical breast cancer chemotoxic drug. The learnt functions are subsequently used to predict how to sequence the intervention. We demonstrate the versatility of CHIMERA in learning from tumor growth and pharmacokinetics data to provide robust predictions under two, typically used, chemotherapy protocol hypotheses.