Presentation on YouTube

In this talk, we will investigate cancer treatment as a game-theoretic contest between the physician's therapy and the cancer cells' resistance strategies. This game has two critical asymmetries: (1) Only the physician can play rationally. Cancer cells, like all evolving organisms, can only adapt to current conditions; they can neither anticipate nor evolve adaptations for treatments that the physician has not yet applied. (2) It has a distinctive Stackelberg structure; the "leader" oncologist plays first and the "follower" cancer cells then respond and adapt to therapy. We will learn how the physician can utilize his advantages in this game.