Bifurcation Analysis in a Tumor-Immune System Interaction Model with Dendritic Cell Therapy and Immune Response Delay

In this paper, we study a tumor-immune system interaction model with dendritic cell therapy and immune response delay. First, it is shown that the ODE version of the model has a Bogdanov-Takens (BT) singularity or a weak focus with multiplicity at most 1 for different parameter values. As the parameters vary, the ODE model undergoes supercritical Hopf bifurcation and supercritical BT bifurcation. Our analysis indicates that there exists a threshold value of the activation rate of T cells, below which tumor immune escape occurs, above or at which T cells and tumor cells coexist in the form of a stable periodic oscillation or steady state. Second, we study how the immune response delay affects the dynamics of the model. Our results reveal that the delay can destabilize the stable positive equilibrium through Hopf bifurcation. Furthermore, the direction and stability of Hopf bifurcation are derived. When there is a cusp, we show that it is a BT singularity for any delay and the delay model also undergoes BT bifurcation. Finally, numerical simulations are to illustrate the theoretical results.