Recently, Professor Runhui Liu's research team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at East China University of Science and Technology proposed a novel synergistic anticancer strategy that exhibits highly efficient synergistic activity against multidrug-resistant tumor cells. It has shown significant therapeutic effects in multidrug-resistant tumor mice models without inducing drug resistance, providing a new approach for the treatment of resistant tumors and reversing tumor drug resistance. The related research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Currently, multidrug resistance and cross-resistance of tumors to chemotherapy drugs remain major obstacles to cancer cure. There is an urgent need to explore new therapeutic agents and combinations of existing chemotherapy drugs to reverse drug resistance and reduce its occurrence.
In previous studies, the research team developed a class of β-peptide polymers targeting multidrug-resistant tumors. These polymers kill cancer cells through a membrane lytic mechanism and demonstrate highly effective and broad-spectrum anticancer activity against multidrug-resistant cancer cells. Building upon this foundation, the team found that the anticancer β-peptide polymers synergize effectively with various chemotherapy drugs, reversing multidrug-resistant cancer cells' resistance to these drugs. In mouse models of multidrug-resistant melanoma and drug-resistant in situ breast cancer, the β-peptide polymers significantly enhanced the therapeutic effects of doxorubicin, without inducing resistance to the combination of β-peptide polymers and doxorubicin in cancer cells.
β-Peptide Polymers and Chemotherapeutic Drugs Synergistically Treat Drug-Resistant Tumors and Reverse Tumor Drug Resistance. Image source: Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Related paper information: https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c00434
