title: Overcoming treatment resistance in cancer: Current understanding and tactics.
abstract: Chemotherapy is the standard treatment for many, if not all, metastatic cancers. While chemotherapy is often capable of inducing cell death in tumors leading to shrinkage of the tumor bulk, many patients suffer from recurrence and ultimately death due to resistance. During the last decade, treatment resistance has attracted great attention followed by some seminal discoveries, including sequential mutations, cancer stem cells, and bidirectional inter-conversion of stem and non-stem cancer cell populations. Nevertheless, the successful treatment of cancer will require a considerable refinement of our knowledge concerning treatment resistance. In doing so, we expect that a more informed and refined approach to treat cancer will be developed and this may improve prognosis of cancer patients. In this review, we will discuss the current knowledge concerning the failure of cancer treatments and the potential approaches to overcome therapeutic resistance.
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia.
authors.forename: Guang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia.
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia.
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liddle
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia; Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia. Electronic address: lionel.hebbard@jcu.edu.au.
authors.forename: Lionel
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hebbard
authors.affiliation: Storr Liver Centre, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, The University of Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia. Electronic address: liang.qiao@sydney.edu.au.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qiao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D019008:Drug Resistance, Neoplasm / Q000187:drug effects*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects*
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents
keywords: Cancer progression; Cancer stem cells; EMT; EMT transition; Mutation; Treatment resistance