Targeting Apoptosis to Overcome Chemotherapy Resistance
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
ABSTRACT
Chemotherapy resistance is a major limiting factor for the extensive use of chemotherapeutic drugs in cancer treatment. Despite the large number of newly discovered medications, treatment success rates are still unsatisfactory. Programmed cell death, called apoptosis, is one of the main tissue homeostasis mechanisms that balances cell survival and death. Apoptosis can be induced through extrinsic and intrinsic pathways or repressed by inhibitor proteins. During tumor progression, homeostasis between the anti-apoptotic and pro-apoptotic regulators is disturbed and shifted towards survival through various escape mechanisms. Dysregulation of apoptosis-regulatory mediators, particularly high levels of anti-apoptotic proteins, is one of the main mechanisms by which tumor cells acquire resistance to chemo- and radiotherapy. Therefore, it is important to restore apoptosis in the chemo- and radiotherapy resistant tumor cells. In this chapter, we summarize general chemotherapy resistance mechanisms, discuss the role of extrinsic and intrinsic pathways in chemoresistance, and review the current experimental strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance targeting the apoptotic pathways.
Downloads
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright of individual chapters belongs to the respective authors. The authors grant unrestricted publishing and distribution rights to the publisher. The electronic versions of the chapters are published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Users are allowed to share and adapt the chapters for any non-commercial purposes as long as the authors and the publisher are explicitly identified and properly acknowledged as the original source. The books in their entirety are subject to copyright by the publisher. The reproduction, modification, republication and display of the books in their entirety, in any form, by anyone, for commercial purposes are strictly prohibited without the written consent of the publisher.