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Combination of Chinese and Western Medicine to Prevent and Reverse Resistance of Cancer Cells to Anticancer Drugs

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Abstract

Resistance to anticancer drugs is a major problem in oncology, which causes the failure of antitumor treatment. A variety of factors contribute to drug resistance, including drug efflux and metabolism, tumor cell heterogeneity, tumor microenvironment stress-induced genetic or epigenetic alterations in the cancer cells and so on. However, how to circumvent this resistance to improve anticancer efficacy remains to be determined. To circumvent chemotherapeutic resistance, many reversal agents have been developed, but most of them fail in clinical trials due to severe adverse effects. Recently, several natural products have been reported to augment sensitivity or overcome resistance of anticancer chemotherapeutic drugs, including elemene, curcumin, Shenqi Fuzheng Injection (参芪扶正注射液), PHY906, etc. Thus, understanding the novel function of Chinese medicine may allow us to develop a promising therapeutic approach to enhance the effects of anticancer strategies and prevent or overcome their resistance in the treatment of cancer patients.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Holistic Integrative Pharmacy Institutes and Comprehensive Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Center, the Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, College of Medicine, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China

    Xin-bing Sui & Tian Xie

  2. Key Laboratory of Elemene Class Anti-cancer Chinese Medicine of Zhejiang Province and Engineering Laboratory of Development and Application of Traditional Chinese Medicine from Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China

    Xin-bing Sui & Tian Xie

Authors
  1. Xin-bing Sui
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  2. Tian Xie
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Correspondence to Tian Xie.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest. None of the contents of this manuscript has been previously published or is under consideration elsewhere. All the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript prior to submission.

Additional information

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81672932, 81730108, 81874380 and 81973635), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. LR18H160001), Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Project of TCM (No. 2019ZZ016), Zhejiang Province Medical Science and Technology Project (No. 2017RC007), Talent Project of Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology (No. 2017YCGC002), Key Project of Hangzhou Ministry of Science and Technology (No. 20162013A07)

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Sui, Xb., Xie, T. Combination of Chinese and Western Medicine to Prevent and Reverse Resistance of Cancer Cells to Anticancer Drugs. Chin. J. Integr. Med. 26, 251–255 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-019-3180-x

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