The Role of Exosomes and its Cargos in Drug Resistance of Cancer
Pages 179-187
Yujie Xie and Liwu Fu

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1929-2279.2015.04.04.6

Published: 26 November 2015

Abstract: Chemotherapy is one of the main therapies in cancer and plays an important role in controlling tumor progression, which can offer a longer overall survival (OS) for patients. But as the accumulation of drugs used in vivo, cancer cells develop drug resistance, even multi-drug resistance (MDR), that can cause failure of the whole therapy. The similar phenomenon can be observed in vitro. There are several mechanisms of drug resistance such as drug efflux, mediated by extracellular vesicles. Exosomes, a subset of extracellular vesicles (EVs), can be secreted by many types of cells and transfer proteins, lipids, and miRNA/mRNA/DNAs between cells in vitro and in vivo. Particularly cancer cells secrete more exosomes than healthy cells and resistance cells secrete more exosomes than sensitive cells. Exosomes have function of intercellular communication and molecular transfer, both associated with tumor growth, invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis, and drug resistance. In this paper, we will review the current knowledge regarding the emerging roles of exosomes and its cargo in drug resistance.

Keywords: Exosomes, drug resistance, drug efflux, antibody, miRNAs, lncRNA, P-glycoprotein, EMT.