Apoptosis and drug resistance: introduction

There is rapidly expanding literature to show that anticancer drugs kill certain cell types by inducing apoptosis. Since there are gene products and signalling pathways that inhibit apoptosis, and others that promote it, it should not be surprising that modulation of their activity can bring about drug resistance. What makes these genes particularly attractive to those interested in mechanisms of drug resistance is a prediction that they would impose a pleotropic drug resistance, independent of particular mechanisms of damage; put simply, this is resistance to death. Pleotropic resistance of this type describes the reality of much of drug resistance observed in the clinic. This chapter reviews the influence of some of the genes that determine whether drug-induced perturbations can induce cell death.

Why do cells die after treatment with antitumor drugs and why, more often, do they not? New perceptions of mechanisms of drug resistance

Asking the question, ‘why do tumor cells die after treatment with antitumor drugs?’ obviously might provide some insights to the counter question of why, more often, they do not and are drug resistant. Until recently, there have been surprisingly few attempts to answer the question of why, in molecular terms, the cell dies after drugs or irradiation.