Drug Resistance and Its Future Perspectives in Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Cancer is a disease of the cells, which are the body’s fundamental building blocks. Cancer falls out when abnormal cells grow in an uncontrolled way. These abnormal cells can damage or invade the surrounding tissues, or spread to other parts of the body, causing further damage or invasion of the surrounding tissues. Cancers can develop resistance to traditional therapies, and the increasing prevalence of these drug resistant cancers is needed to take under extensive research for further development of treatment strategy. This review study outlines the current knowledge of mechanisms that promote or enable drug resistance, such as drug inactivation, drug target alteration, drug efflux, DNA damage repair, cell death inhibition, and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, as well as how does inherent tumor cell heterogeneity play a role in drug resistance. It also describes the epigenetic modifications that can provoke drug resistance and considers how such epigenetic factors may contribute to the development of cancer progenitor cells, which are not killed by conventional cancer therapies. Lastly, this review outlines with a discussion on the best treatment options for existing drug resistant cancers.