Laser immunotherapy and the tumor-immune system interaction: a mathematical model and analysis

Laser immunotherapy (LIT) is a cancer treatment with promising results in animal models and some 'no other option' patients. The therapy elicits an immune response that targets the primary tumor and, perhaps more importantly, otherwise untreatable metastases. We develop and analyze a mathematical model that includes key elements of the host immune response set in motion by LIT. We use Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) to efficiently sample model parameters from a high-dimensional parameter space and get a broad sense of model dynamics. Depending on a variety of tumor, therapy, and immune parameters, a variety of patient outcomes ranging from tumor clearance to patient death are possible.