Resistance to chemotherapeutic
4,453 viewsThe biggest failure of anticancer chemotherapy is due to drug resistance. This resistance occurs because the cell populations or develop new encoding gene (mutation) or because they are encouraged to develop cell types resistant to being exposed to drugs, allowing them to engage in alternative pathways through the synthesis of new enzymes.
When it is found resistance
It also found resistance in cases where treatment is discontinued, when the population is still sensitive to tumor drugs in chemotherapy is applied at irregular intervals and that inadequate doses are administered. From the seventies, has been detected in the laboratory, a kind of cross-resistance by cell lines from various chemotherapeutics, whose common characteristic is that they are derived from natural products. This type of phenomenon has been termed “multidrug resistance” and is related to decreased intracellular concentration of chemotherapy and the presence of a glycoprotein, linked to the plasma membrane glycoprotein 170-P.
It is interesting to deduce that it is possible to reverse the resistance mechanism from the use of compounds that inactivate the P-glycoprotein 170. Some of them are already known, but still are under clinical studies.
It is necessary to emphasize the advantage of starting to chemotherapy when the tumor population is small, the growth fraction is large and the likelihood of resistance by cells with mutagenic potential is minimal. These are ideal conditions to proceed with adjuvant chemotherapy.