Effect of immunotherapy on the response of TICLs to solid tumour invasion

•We model the response of tumour infiltrating cytotoxic lymphocytes (TICLs) to a solid tumour without any medical intervention.•Mathematical analysis and numerical simulations show the existence of cancer dormancy.•We investigate the effect of boosting CTLIs with immunotherapy by adding a class of IL2 in the initial model.•The analysis in the last case shows a considerable reduction of the size of the dormant tumour.

There is clinical evidence that some people have lived with a benign tumour for their entire life time. This is explained by cancer dormancy which is attributed to the interaction of tumour infiltrating cytotoxic lymphocytes (TICLs) with tumour cells. We present two mathematical models to study the mechanism of interaction of TICLs with tumour cells, with and without clinical intervention. Stability analysis and numerical simulations of the models reveal the existence of a stable tumour dormant state.