Considering Plant Metabolites and Their Synthetic Derivatives as Candidates for the Development of Drugs Against Multidrug Resistant (MDR) Tumors

RIJO P. M.; ATHANASSOPOULOS C.M.; CARPINELLA M. C.

Frontiers in Pharmacology

Frontiers

Año: 2022 vol. 13 p. 1108252 - 1108252

1663-9812

Despite the great benefits of chemotherapy, the ability of tumor cells to acquirecross-resistance to multiple antineoplastic drugs (MDR) results in a drastic reduction inthe efficacy of these agents. Of greatest concern is the consequent failure in clinicalpractice, which remains one of the major barriers to successful cancer treatment. Toimprove patient outcome, novel efficacious anti-cancer agents or approaches to reverseMDR are necessary.Plants have been an endless and vital source of pharmacologically activecompounds, many of which are widely used in cancer therapies, not only to control tumorcells, but also to increase their sensitivity to chemotherapeutic agents. The structuraldiversity and array of biological properties of plant-derived metabolites, in particularagainst tumors, make these strong candidates to combat MDR cells or establish theirscaffolds as a valuable base for the synthesis of derivatives.This enormous potential of plants to tackle MDR tumors encouraged us to publishthis Research Topic to display and discuss the cutting-edge research in the field. Aseditors, it was a pleasure to review a wide range of fascinating articles with differentperspectives, and we summarize here the main findings of accepted articles.