Cancer is a major public health issue and a leading cause of mortality across the globe with a third of people in developing countries at risk of developing cancer within their lifetime. Treatment of cancer often involves a combination of surgery, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy. Chemotherapy drug resistance is one of the most significant barriers causing major problems for successful treatment to cancer. Cancer cells are resistant to a large number of anticancer medicines resulting in up to 90% of cancer-related fatalities being caused by drug resistance and subsequent ineffectiveness of these therapies. The emergence of chemotherapeutic drug resistance has been linked to either innate or acquired chemo-resistance. The efflux of anticancer medicines by ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters is one of the key mechanisms of drug resistance.
Infectious diseases are caused by pathogens including bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses, which can be transmitted between individuals. Antimicrobial agents, such as antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, and antiparasitic, are used to combat microbes and play an important role in the prevention and treatment of infections. Development of new antimicrobials is slow and as the indiscriminate usage of antimicrobials continues to grow, this has resulted in medication resistance to numerous bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoal illnesses, such as tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS, invasive candidiasis, and malaria. Antimicrobial-resistant diseases kill 700,000 people every year throughout the world.
According to the National Institutes of Health, biofilm-associated organisms are involved in up to 80% of human microbial infections. They colonize a broad range of medical devices and have been linked to several long-term illnesses. One of the key issues of biofilms is their growing resistance to antimicrobial drugs, which makes it difficult to treat illnesses in clinical settings. Furthermore, microbial cells also acquire drug resistance because of overexpression of the ABC transporter efflux systems.
In view of the increased resistance of cancer and infectious diseases to drug treatments, new strategies are of high importance. Novel substances with reduced side effects and increased efficacy are necessary to overcome the surge in cancer and infectious disease cases, and increased drug resistance. Bio-actives, notably those derived from natural products (chemical compounds or substances produced by a living organism), have proven to be a remarkable source with unique features and less toxicity, making them ideal candidates as pharmacotherapeutics. Furthermore, natural product-based bio-actives may reverse drug resistance in cancer and infectious microbial cells by changing or hindering the expression of efflux pumps, as well as by targeting other molecular targets.
Within this Research Topic, we welcome original research and reviews, which fall within, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Understanding the causes of drug resistance in the case of cancer or infectious diseases
- The link between drug resistance in cancer and in infectious diseases
- Targeting drug-resistant cancer and microbial cells with novel natural product-based bio-actives
- Mitigating drug resistance in cancer and microbial cells by combining existing anticancer and antimicrobials with natural product-based bio-actives
- Understanding the pharmacological mechanism of the anticancer and antimicrobial potential of natural product-based bio-actives through multi-omics technologies
- Evaluation of the pre-clinical and clinical application of specific therapeutic targets of natural product-based bio-actives for their anticancer and antimicrobial potentials
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here.