Optimal control of HPV infection and cervical cancer cells

The uncontrollable proliferation of human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause severe cervical cancer. The objective of this work is to study the optimal control of HPV viral replication and its consequence in reducing cervical cancer cells. For this purpose, the dynamics involving healthy cells, HPV and cervical cancer cells will be modelled by a system of five differential equations. The transmission describing viral infection will be represented by some biological incidence functions. In order to reduce the HPV infection, two controls are incorporated to the model. The first one represents the efficacy of drug treatment in blocking new infections, whereas the second serves as the drug effectiveness in inhibiting viral production. Numerical simulation have shown that the optimal control strategy have an essential role in reducing HPV viral repli­cation. Consequently, the number of cervical cancer cells are reduced considerably.