ABSTRACT
Modern chemotherapy and antibiotics arose in the same era, between the two world wars through World War II. The sulfonamides were introduced in 1935, and penicillin followed in 1940. The era immediately before and after World War II was revolutionary in the treatment of infectious disease. Rapidly fading was the therapeutic nihilism of the previous era, and many once deadly diseases were now easily curable. As R. J. Papac points out in her review of the beginnings of cancer chemotherapy, there was a hope that the "magic bullet" concept enjoying success in antimicrobial therapy would be applicable to cancers. Despite their success, both antibiotic and anticancer agents have been plagued by the evolution of resistance. Understanding the evolution of resistance in cancer is a central goal of this chapter. Many other models designed to study sensitive and resistant tumor cell populations use simpler ordinary differential equation (ODE) formulations for the cell cycle or for transfer between quiescent and proliferating compartments.
