The use of proteomic technologies to study molecular mechanisms of multidrug resistance in cancer

Multidrug resistance (MDR), defined as the cross-resistance of cancer cells toward a broad range of chemotherapeutic agents, is a universal and intractable problem in chemotherapy. The understanding of MDR mechanisms is essential to discover the potential biomarkers for predicting multidrug resistance and more importantly, tackling and preventing multidrug resistance. Multiple technologies have been used to study MDR mechanisms including comparative genomic hybridization, DNA array, differential display RT-PCR and various immunoassays. Compared with these approaches, proteomic technologies allow a high through-put analysis of protein detection, protein quantification and protein interaction with high accuracy. With the rapid development of proteomic studies in recent years, proteomic technologies have made substantial contributions to the characterization of MDR mechanisms including MDR-related protein detection and quantification, as well as the characterization of drug-transporter binding sites. This review offers a comprehensive illustration of MDR, proteomic technologies and the discoveries made in understanding MDR mechanisms using proteomic approaches.