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 (), 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.
Keywords: Chinese medicine; Western medicine; anticancer drugs; integrative Chinese and Western medicine; resistance.