Understanding the mechanisms responsible for the resistance against chemotherapy-induced cell death is still of great interest since the number of patients with cancer increases and relapse is commonly observed. Indeed, the development of hypoxic regions as well as UPR (unfolded protein response) activation is known to promote cancer cell adaptive responses to the stressful tumor microenvironment and resistance against anticancer therapies. Therefore, the impact of UPR combined to hypoxia on autophagy and apoptosis activation during taxol exposure was investigated in MDA-MB-231 and T47D breast cancer cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHypoxia plays an important role in the resistance of tumour cells to chemotherapy. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this process are not well understood. Moreover, according to the cell lines, hypoxia differently influences cell death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiochem Pharmacol
September 2011
Since the 1940s, chemotherapy has been the treatment of choice for metastatic disease. Chemotherapeutic agents target proliferating cells, inducing cell death. For most of the history of chemotherapy, apoptosis was thought to be the only mechanism of drug-induced cell death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hypoxia is a hallmark of solid tumors and is associated with metastases, therapeutic resistance and poor patient survival.
Results: In this study, we showed that hypoxia protected MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells against paclitaxel- but not epirubicin-induced apoptosis. The possible implication of HIF-1 and AP-1 in the hypoxia-induced anti-apoptotic pathway was investigated by the use of specific siRNA.