Genes and proteins associated with chemotherapeutic resistance in breast cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is the main type of cancer that affects women in the world. Treatment with chemotherapeutic agents for this type of cancer depends to a large extent on the phenotypic characteristics that appear in the tumor, such as some receptors. The treatment of breast cancer is complex since not all patients respond adequately to it and this is partly due to mechanisms of resistance to treatment. The resistance either acquired or intrinsic to chemotherapeutics against breast cancer is related to multiple genes and proteins that are actively involved in the development of resistance mechanisms, which may be inhibiting the binding of the drug to the target receptor, inhibiting the gene expression of the receptors, activating signaling pathways, inducing the action of transporters that expel the drug from the cell, etc. As a result of this review, the mechanisms of chemotherapeutic resistance in breast cancer derived from genes and proteins related to say disease are described, including genes related to different types of breast cancer, as well as with different therapeutic strategies. These genes and their products of expression include a wide range of interactions and activations of signalling pathways that trigger a poor response to treatment, which translates into a worse prognosis, higher risk of prevalence and death, favouring breast cancer to be the main cause of cancer death in women. Objective: Conduct an updated review of genes and proteins, that have been associated with conferring resistance to the different chemotherapeutic agents used for the treatment of breast cancer, including the mechanism of resistance and the type of cancer in which it is generated. Method: The search for indexed articles in the PubMed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) and ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com) databases was performed, using the words “Breast cancer resistance” as a search criterion, articles published in the period 2015-2017 were selected.