Abstract
Resistance to chemotherapy still remains a major challenge in the clinic, impairing the quality of life and survival rate of patients. The identification of unconventional chemosensitizing agents is therefore an interesting aspect of cancer research. Resveratrol has emerged in the last decades as a fascinating molecule, able to modulate several cancer-related molecular mechanisms, suggesting a possible application as an adjuvant in cancer management. This review goes deep into the existing literature concerning the possible chemosensitizing effect of resveratrol associated with the most conventional chemotherapeutic drugs. Despite the promising effects observed in different cancer types in in vitro studies, the clinical translation still presents strong limitations due to the low bioavailability of resveratrol. Recently, efforts have been moved in the field of drug delivery to identifying possible strategies/formulations useful for a more effective administration. Despite the necessity of a huge implementation in this research area, resveratrol appears as a promising molecule able to sensitize resistant tumors to drugs, suggesting its potential use in therapy-refractory cancer patients.
Highlights
In recent decades, cancer therapy and management of the disease have seen huge advances in ameliorating patient outcomes and the quality of a patient’s life
The increase in cisplatin uptake in Ehrlich cells may be explained by the effect of resveratrol in the inhibition of plasma membrane multidrug transporters (P-gp), which plays an important role in absorption, distribution and elimination of anticancer drugs [77]
A positive property of this molecule is that it is well-tolerated in patients and appears to induce minimal collateral and side effects even at high doses; this aspect has been validated by several clinical trials aimed at studying the safety, pharmacokinetics and metabolism of resveratrol [27]
Summary
Cancer therapy and management of the disease have seen huge advances in ameliorating patient outcomes and the quality of a patient’s life. Despite this progress, cancer still remains one of the foremost causes of mortality worldwide. Even if many molecular mechanisms that underpin cancer evasion of drug toxicity have been clarified, still many uncleared aspects remain. These mechanisms are made up of a diverse set of signaling pathways, which can be activated by a wealth of stimuli to promote chemoresistance [4]. Chemoresistance is a multifactorial phenomenon that is not completely understood and represents a challenge in the oncological field that needs to be explored, understood and avoided [5,7]
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