title: Drug resistance in cancer: an overview.
abstract: Cancers have the ability to develop resistance to traditional therapies, and the increasing prevalence of these drug resistant cancers necessitates further research and treatment development. This paper 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 inherent tumor cell heterogeneity plays a role in drug resistance. It also describes the epigenetic modifications that can induce 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 concludes with a discussion on the best treatment options for existing drug resistant cancers, ways to prevent the formation of drug resistant cancers and cancer progenitor cells, and future directions of study.
authors.affiliation: School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. ghousman@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Housman
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA. sbyler@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Shannon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Byler
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA. heerboth@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Heerboth
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA. karolka@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Karolina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lapinska
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Mckenna_Longacre@hms.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Mckenna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Longacre
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA. nsnyder@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Snyder
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA. ss1@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Sibaji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sarkar