BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - Cancer is a widespread disease with multifaceted properties. One of these properties is drug-resistant behavior, which has created hurdles in the ongoing treatment of cancer patients. Prostate cancer is the most common non-cutaneous malignancy in American men. Early stage prostate cancer is relatively benign and can be treated. Hormone therapy is frequently used to treat advanced stages of prostate cancer, and this therapy works efficiently on androgen sensitive prostate cancers but not on androgen-independent advanced-stage metastatic prostate cancer. Response to these treatments at such a stage is poor, which leads to high rates of mortality and morbidity.
Docetaxel has been a useful chemotherapeutic drug for prostate cancer for over a decade. However, emergence of resistance to docetaxel is a significant clinical problem that has been a challenge since it was established as a front-line therapy for metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. Emergence of docetaxel resistance may limit the extent of the treatment, and systemic side effects obstruct its compliance. Novel chemotherapeutic drugs that were developed to treat docetaxel resistant cancers carry significant hematological toxicities that may instead outweigh their benefits. Moreover, docetaxel resistance invariably leads to disease relapse. This resistance to docetaxel is either intrinsic or established by adopting various mechanisms that are highly associated with genetic modifications, reduced influx, and augmented efflux of drugs. Novel therapeutic strategies that may allow reversal of docetaxel resistance are being pursued with great interest and nanotechnology is one of the many strategies to counter docetaxel resistance.
This review provides several approaches to counter docetaxel resistance employing nanotechnology approaches. Nanotechnology-facilitated docetaxel delivery is superior to currently used therapeutic strategies and is a more effective method to induce P-glycoprotein inhibition, improve cellular uptake, preserve sustained drug release, and increase bioavailability. Several combinations of therapies and small P-glycoprotein inhibitors have been proposed to improve the therapeutic potential of docetaxel in prostate cancer but clinically haven’t proved to be useful. Thus, it appears that nanotechnology is a tangible approach to improve prostate cancer therapeutics.
Written by:
Meena Jaggi, PhD as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.
Associate Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Cancer Research Building
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Memphis, TN USA
Nanoways to overcome docetaxel resistance in prostate cancer - Abstract