Drug resistance in human cancers — Mechanisms and implications

Cancers have complex etiology and pose a significant impact from the health care perspective apart from the socio-economic implications. The enormity of challenge posed by cancers can be understood from the fact that clinical trials for cancer therapy has yielded minimum potential promises compared to those obtained for other diseases. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy continue to be the mainstay therapeutic options for cancers. Among the challenges posed by these options, induced resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs is probably the most significant contributor for poor prognosis and ineffectiveness of the therapy. Drug resistance is a property exhibited by almost all cancer types including carcinomas, leukemias, myelomas, sarcomas and lymphomas. The mechanisms by which drug resistance is induced include the factors within the tumor microenvironment, mutations in the genes responsible for drug metabolism, changes in the surface drug receptors and increased drug efflux. We present here comprehensively the drug resistance in cancers along with their mechanisms. Also, apart from resistance to regularly used chemotherapeutic drugs, we present resistance induction to new generation therapeutic agents such as monoclonal antibodies. Finally, we have discussed the experimental approaches to understand the mechanisms underlying induction of drug resistance and potential ways to mitigate induced drug resistance.