Modeling a continuum of drug-induced persistence during targeted cancer therapy.

A phenomenological framework links phenotypic plasticity to drug persisters during targeted cancer therapy, predicting an optimum drug concentration and an optimum drug holiday schedule.

• Why it matters: Targeted therapy can select for persisters that survive treatment and may later enable true resistance, but the continuum of drug-induced persistence is not well understood.
• What they did: The framework incorporates experimental observations of phenotypic variation across single-cell clones and considers how the drug itself may enhance the survival strategy.
• The result: It predicts an optimum drug concentration and an optimum drug holiday schedule to minimize the persistence-based threat, implying actionable treatment timing.