Tumour suppression by immune system through stochastic oscillations

The well-known Kirschner–Panetta model for tumour–immune System interplay [Kirschner, D., Panetta, J.C., 1998. Modelling immunotherapy of the tumour–immune interaction. J. Math. Biol. 37 (3), 235–252] reproduces a number of features of this essential interaction, but it excludes the possibility of tumour suppression by the immune system in the absence of therapy. Here we present a hybrid–stochastic version of that model. In this new framework, we show that in reality the model is also able to reproduce the suppression, through stochastic extinction after the first spike of an oscillation.