Unveiling the mechanisms and challenges of cancer drug resistance

Abstract

Cancer treatment faces many hurdles and resistance is one among them. Anti-cancer treatment strategies are evolving due to innate and acquired resistance capacity, governed by genetic, epigenetic, proteomic, metabolic, or microenvironmental cues that ultimately enable selected cancer cells to survive and progress under unfavorable conditions. Although the mechanism of drug resistance is being widely studied to generate new target-based drugs with better potency than existing ones. However, due to the broader flexibility in acquired drug resistance, advanced therapeutic options with better efficacy need to be explored. Combination therapy is an alternative with a better success rate though the risk of amplified side effects is commonplace. Moreover, recent groundbreaking precision immune therapy is one of the ways to overcome drug resistance and has revolutionized anticancer therapy to a greater extent with the only limitation of being individual-specific and needs further attention. This review will focus on the challenges and strategies opted by cancer cells to withstand the current therapies at the molecular level and also highlights the emerging therapeutic options -like immunological, and stem cell-based options that may prove to have better potential to challenge the existing problem of therapy resistance.

Amino acid deprivation in cancer cells with compensatory autophagy induction increases sensitivity to autophagy inhibitors

“…However autophagy enhances antioxidant capacity and high energy efficiency through the mitophagic removal of damaged mitochondria and mitochondrial biogenesis, which complicates cancer treatment and increases the risk of disease progression and metastasis. 19 The inhibition of autophagy has been effective in eliminating some dormant cells and resistant lineages and preventing recurrence. 20 However, the limited efficacy of single inhibitors or combination therapies with anticancer agents and the severe adverse outcomes reported in most studies emphasize the need for further research and development.…”

Up to the Herculean Task of Tackling Cancer Therapy Resistance

“…In everyday clinical practice, oncologists face resistance to numerous cancer therapies, resulting in treatment failure and poor patient survival. Due to the multifaceted nature of this major issue, overcoming cancer drug resistance demands heroic efforts from multidisciplinary research teams equipped with ingenuity, perseverance, and a large amount of funding [1].…”