Taxane resistance in breast cancer

Despite recent progress in the treatment of breast cancer, disease recurrence remains a major issue to curative therapy. One of the major clinical issues is the development of drug resistance. Taxane resistance is a big challenge because taxanes, either alone or in combination, is the first-line regimens for treating breast cancer. A hierarchy of resistant mechanisms are responsible for taxane resistance. At the highest level the mechanisms involve the cancer stem cell (CSC) properties. At the middle level the mechanisms involve the multidrug resistance characters. At the lowest level the mechanisms involve a change of a specific character. Each taxaneresistant case may involve one or more levels of these resistance mechanisms. To overcome taxane resistance, future therapies need to be able to mitigate these three levels of resistance mechanisms.