Year: 2014
Type: review
Abstract: Cancer drug resistance is a major problem, with the majority of patients with metastatic disease ultimately developing multidrug resistance and succumbing to their disease. Our understanding of molecular events underpinning treatment failure has been enhanced by new genomic technologies and pre-clinical studies. Intratumour genetic heterogeneity (ITH) is a prominent contributor to therapeutic failure, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that individual tumours may achieve resistance via multiple routes simultaneously - termed polyclonal resistance. Efforts to target single resistance mechanisms to overcome therapeutic failure may therefore yield only limited success. Clinical studies with sequential analysis of tumour material are needed to enhance our understanding of inter-clonal functional relationships and tumour evolution during therapy, and to improve drug development strategies in cancer medicine.
Source: Molecular Oncology
Authors: Rebecca A. Burrell, Charles Swanton
Institutions: Cancer Research UK, University College London
Language: English
Subfield: Cancer Research
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2125974203