Predicting the effectiveness of multi-drug cancer therapies

Despite the ongoing development of new targeted cancer drugs, the survival rate of patients with aggressive forms of cancer like lung and pancreatic cancer is still poor. The main reason is the ability of cancer to develop resistance against cancer drugs. One strategy to overcome this resistance is to use cancer therapies with several drugs administered at the same time. This can increase our chances to kill cancer cells before they develop resistance. In order to investigate the effectiveness of such therapies, we let the in silico model of cancer Vini to calculate the most effective 2-drug therapies against non-small cell lung (NSCLC), small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and pancreatic cancer. Vini calculated the combination of vinorelbine with paclitaxel as the most effective against NSCLC, the combination of everolimus with doxorubicin as the most effective against SCLC, and the combination of everolimus with paclitaxel as the most effective against pancreatic cancer. As the existing clinical studies confirm Vini's calculations, it is justified to let Vini search for the combined cancer therapies with even more drugs. In order to further increase their effectiveness, the next research step will be the personalization of such therapies.