Taxanes are chemotherapeutic drugs employed in the clinic to treat a variety of malignancies. Despite their overall efficacy, cancer cells often display resistance to taxanes. Therefore, new strategies to increase the effectiveness of taxane-based chemotherapeutics are urgently needed. Multiple molecular players are linked to taxane resistance; these include efflux pumps, DNA repair mechanisms, and hypoxia-related pathways. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that both non-coding RNAs and epigenetic effectors might also be implicated in taxane resistance. Here we focus on the causes of taxane resistance, with the aim to envisage an integrated model of the 'taxane resistance phenome'. This model could help the development of novel therapeutic strategies to treat taxane-resistant neoplasms.
Keywords: Taxanes; drug resistance; experimental therapies; hypoxia; non-coding RNAs.
Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.