Yi Zhang

Yan Cheng

Jin-Ming Yang

Ceshi Chen

Basic scientific background Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer and the most frequent cause of cancer death among women worldwide. Currently, subtyping breast cancers into hormone receptor (HR) positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 overexpressing (HER2+), and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the basis of diagnosing and treating this disease. The main treatment strategies for breast cancer include surgery, endocrine therapy, molecular targeted therapy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and gene therapy. However, resistance of breast cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents, molecular targeted therapies and immunotherapy may occur either intrinsically or de nova, and is often ultimately responsible for treatment failure. Therefore, drug resistance poses a major challenge to breast cancer treatment. Current developments: Drug resistance in breast cancer is a complex clinical condition originating from a wide range of molecular alterations. The development of endocrine therapy resistance is believed to be associated with many cellular changes, such as ESR1 gene mutations, bypassing estrogen signaling pathway and altered tamoxifen metabolism. Meanwhile, changes in immune response, alternation of drug-binding property and downstream pathways are involved in the mechanisms of drug resistance in HER2+ breast cancer. In addition, resistance to chemotherapeutic agents predominantly arises from increased drug efflux and cross resistance. Current studies suggest that treatment strategies and therapeutics have to be designed specifically to each patient in different clinical situations. The use of modern genomic, proteomic and functional analytical techniques has contributed to identify novel genes and signaling networks involved in breast cancer drug resistance. Moreover, the use of high-throughput techniques in combination with bioinformatics and systems biology approaches has aided the interrogation of clinical samples and allowed the identification of molecular signatures and genotypes that predict responses to certain drugs. Despite much progress has been made in the field of breast cancer drug resistance, such as combination therapy and drug-loaded nanoparticles, the complexity and variability of drug resistance mechanism still inevitably lead to the continuous occurrence of drug resistance. Therefore, with the increasing amounts of anti-breast cancer agents, there are now unprecedented opportunities to understand and overcome drug resistance through further research into mechanisms and corresponding strategies, which will help achieve lasting disease control and bring survival benefits to patients with advanced cancer. Papers of interest: The current Research Topic of Frontiers in Pharmacology focuses on publishing Original Research, Review articles and Case Reports focusing on (a) elucidating mechanisms of drug resistance in breast cancer, target mutations, tumor microenvironment, undiscovered genes and signaling pathways; (b) promising drug delivery systems that can enhance the sensitivity of anti- breast cancer agents to various tumors; (c) strategies that can improve patient care during bio-chemotherapeutic treatments; (d) small molecule compounds that are effective against drug-resistant breast tumors (e) biomarkers of chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer patients and (f) in vitro and in vivo models. Guidelines for article of submission: - Authors must stick to the set guidelines for ethical practices by the Frontiers journals. - The main content of the article must have certain innovation and research significance. - The authors should describe the construction method of drug-resistant cell lines when using them for experiments in the article.

Yan Cheng

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