Engineering Nanomedicines to Overcome Multidrug Resistance in Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Drug resistance to conventional antitumor drugs still remains one of the major causes of treatment failure in patients affected by tumors. Two main types of drug resistance to anticancer drugs can be recognized in tumors, intrinsic resistance, in which tumor cells are inherent resistant to chemotherapy and acquired resistance, as a result of previous drug exposure. Tumor cells resistant to a chemotherapeutic agent became cross-resistant to both similar and structurally unrelated classes of antitumor drugs, a biological mechanism known as multi drug resistance (MDR). Among the strategies considered to overcome MDR, nanovector-mediated drug administration represents an innovative and promising..