Automating the drug scheduling with different toxicity clearance in cancer chemotherapy via evolutionary computation

Abstract

The toxicity of an anticancer drug is cleared from the body by different processes, including saturable metabolic and nonsaturable renal-excretion pathways. According to the principles of toxicokinetics, we propose a new anticancer drug scheduling model with different toxic elimination processes in this paper. We also present a sophisticated automating drug scheduling approach based on evolutionary computation and computer modeling. To explore multiple efficient drug scheduling policies, we use a multimodal optimization algorithm - adaptive elitist-population based genetic algorithm (AEGA) to solve the new model, and discuss the situation of multiple optimal solutions under different parameter settings. The simulation results obtained by the new model match well with the clinical treatment experience, and can provide much more drug scheduling policies for a doctor to choose depending on the particular conditions of the patients. Copyright 2006 ACM.