Adaptive mechanisms of resistance to anti-neoplastic agents.

Medchemcomm

Department of Biomedicine , Centre for Cancer Biomarkers , University of Bergen, Jonas Lies Vei 91 , 5009 Bergen , Norway.

Published: January 2017

AI Article Synopsis

  • Intrinsic and acquired resistance to cancer treatments is a major reason for ineffective therapies in patients.
  • A deep understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind this resistance is essential to develop targeted strategies to overcome it.
  • The review highlights various adaptive mechanisms tumors use to resist therapy, such as changes in cellular characteristics, alterations in the tumor microenvironment, activation of alternative signaling pathways, changes in drug target expression, and use of survival strategies.

Article Abstract

Intrinsic and acquired resistance to conventional and targeted therapeutics is a fundamental reason for treatment failure in many cancer patients. Targeted approaches to overcome chemoresistance as well as resistance to targeted approaches require in depth understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms. The anti-cancer activity of a drug can be limited by a broad variety of molecular events at different levels of drug action in a cell-autonomous and non-cell-autonomous manner. This review summarizes recent insights into the adaptive mechanisms used by tumours to resist therapy including cellular phenotypic plasticity, dynamic alterations of the tumour microenvironment, activation of redundant signal transduction pathways, modulation of drug target expression levels, and exploitation of pro-survival responses.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6072477PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c6md00394jDOI Listing

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