Drug-induced resistance evolution necessitates less aggressive treatment.

ABSTRACT: Increasing body of experimental evidence suggests that anticancer and antimicrobial therapies may themselves promote the acquisition of drug resistance by increasing mutability. The successful control of evolving populations requires that such biological costs of control are identified, quantified and included to the evolutionarily informed treatment protocol. Here we identify, characterise and exploit a trade-off between decreasing the target population size and generating a surplus of treatment-induced rescue mutations. We show that the probability of cure is maximized at an intermediate dosage, below the drug concentration yielding maximal population decay, suggesting that treatment outcomes may in some cases be substantially improved by less aggressive treatment strategies. We also pro

SUBMITTER: Kuosmanen T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8491903 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature