Chemo-resistance Research Methods: Identifying and Understanding Chemo-resistant Cancers for the Development of Novel Therapeutic Strategies

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Guest Editor

Joanna Fox

University of Leicester

Joanna Fox obtained her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from The Institute of Cancer Research, University of London, before joining the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford where Joanna discovered the phospho-regulation of pro-apoptotic protein BAK and its role in determining the apoptotic threshold of cancer cells. Joanna then moved to the MRC Toxicology Unit, University of Cambridge to work as a structural biologist determining the structural architecture of the critical death Inducing Signalling Complex (DISC) by Cryo-Electron Microscopy. Now as an independent Institute of Structural and Chemical Biology-Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellows at the University of Leicester she is interested in the regulation and structural architecture of apoptotic proteins complexes that determine cell fate outcomes. More specifically, her work focuses on how key protein complexes assemble and regulate the ability of a cell to commit to intrinsic apoptosis. This detailed analysis provides mechanistic insight into how the apoptotic threshold of cells is determined and may guide future drug development.

Collection Overview

Resistance to chemotherapy, which can be both inherent and acquired, is a fundamental problem in the treatment of cancer. This collection of articles would focus on methods and models currently used both to study the basic biology of resistance mechanisms. Additionally, it will contain techniques to identify highly resistance cancers to aid patient stratification and methods to test novel therapeutic strategies developed to overcome resistance.

In this collection, I would like to include the following areas:

- Molecular mechanisms of resistance such as cell adhesion mediated drug resistance, the cell surface efflux pump, apoptotic resistance mechanism, autophagy, and cancer stemness

- The development of cell line models with acquired resistance to specific treatments in order to study mechanisms by which cells acquire resistance and act as models to test novel therapeutic strategies

- The development of biomarkers to identify resistance

- Apoptotic profiling of patient samples to identify patients with high apoptotic thresholds resulting in resistant tumors

- The establishment and utilization of tumor explants models to study drug resistance

- Metabolic profiling in resistance models to understand the role of metabolic switching in acquired resistance