New strategy for antagonizing drug resistance: targeting survivin / 中国药理学通报

Multidrug resistance ( MDR) often leads to failure of cancer chemotherapy. survivin, a member of the inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAP) family, is overexpressed in almost all kinds of tumor cells. Importantly, survivin has been identified as one of the most important molecules involved in the regulation of MDR. Therefore, inhibiting the activity of survivin or down-reg-ulating the expression of survivin might be an effective strategy to overcome tumor MDR. In this article, the roles of survivin in-volved in the development of drug resistance and the strategies to overcome drug resistance by targeting survivin are thus re-viewed.