Discover a new method to overcome tumor multidrug resistance and verify it in mice

  Recently, the reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that the research group of Professor Liang Gaolin of the School of Chemistry and Materials Science and the research group of Professor Zhang Huafeng of the School of Life Sciences have discovered a "smart" new method to overcome tumor multidrug resistance. Its excellent anti-multidrug resistance effect was verified in mice. Tumor multidrug resistance refers to the phenomenon that tumor cells have long-term exposure to a certain chemotherapeutic drug and not only are resistant to this chemotherapeutic drug, but can also develop cross-resistance to other chemotherapeutic drugs with different structures and functions . It is one of the important reasons leading to the failure of cancer chemotherapy, and it is also the biggest challenge for clinical cancer treatment. The traditional way to solve this problem is to inhibit the pumping effect of multidrug resistance or use nano-carriers to load large amounts of drugs, but this often brings unnecessary toxic substances into the organism. Therefore, it is very important to develop safer anti-multidrug resistance drugs. Liang Gaolin’s research group designed a method to “modify” the drug itself. The modified drug can “smart” self-assemble into nano-drugs in cancer cells, and has the functions of targeted enrichment and slow drug release. The development of anti-multidrug resistance provides new ideas. The "smart" small molecule drug (2-cyanobenzothiazole-paclitaxel) designed by them enters cancer cells and can self-assemble to generate paclitaxel-containing nanoparticles under the action of the highly expressed furin enzyme in the cell, and then enrich them In cancer cells. Nanomedicine slowly releases free paclitaxel under the action of esterase in cancer cells, thereby killing cancer cells. They collaborated with Zhang Huafeng’s research group to construct multidrug resistance models in cancer cells and living tumor mice experiments, showing that compared with the existing drug paclitaxel, the anti-drug resistance index of 2-cyanobenzothiazole-paclitaxel It increased 4.5 times and 1.5 times in cancer cells and mice, respectively, and did not cause toxicity to mice.

   Liang Gaolin said that this new anti-multidrug resistance strategy provides new ideas for safer drug design and cancer treatment, and will have great application prospects in the clinical treatment of cancer.